I read the writing on the wall as I tapped my foot nervously on the dingy tiled floor of the coffee shop bathroom. I'd always hated public restrooms, especially filthy ones, and this one was no exception. The appley odor of the air freshner combined with the stench that typically radiated from public toilets was turning my stomach and try as I might to breathe through my mouth and hope the feeling passed, I was quickly losing the battle. I stared down at my watch for about the hundredth time and sighed... three more minutes. Time seemed to be standing still for me on purpose this morning, or at the very least it was crawling slower than it ever had before.

"I 'heart' Philip! -- Rhonda and Philip forever!"

"Philip SUX"

I sat there a while longer and studied the writings. I'd never quite understood the need to scrawl out personal information on the back of a stall wall for all of creation to read. Apparently I was in the minority though because it seemed that everyone else in America felt it necessary to do just that. There were scribblings of love and lust and numbers to call for a 'good time.' Sometimes if I'd been really lucky, a drawing or two to keep me entertained.

There was a small knock on the bathroom door and I held my breath as I glanced down at the tiny white stick.

"Keener?!" The familiar voice called out to me from the other side of the door, "You okay in there?"

"Ugh. Yeah."

That was all I could manage to reply. Afterall, I was a tad preoccupied with little stick I held in my hand. I peered down once more and let out relieved sigh when I saw the line.

The one red line.

Just one.

Thank God.

"You sure?" The voice came again.

"I'll be out in a minute... God. Go get a doughnut or something." I knew there'd be hell to pay for that remark, but at least it would get him off my back for a minute or two.

He laughed... then again, maybe I wouldn't be in too much trouble after all.

"You give us a bad name, you know that right?" His reply was predictable, the same he'd given me every morning for years right before he went and bought himself a huge honkin' doughnut just to prove my point.

Yep, the old "cops love doughnuts" cliche. It definitely reigned true with my partner.

I sighed heavily and fought back the tears of relief as I stood from the toilet and pulled my pants back up onto my hips, carefully making sure that my gun was adjusted in it's rightful spot on my belt. How sad was I? Taking a pregnancy test with a gun around my waist anyway?

I couldn't help but smile though as I walked to the mirror and splashed some water on my face, thankful for the moment that I wouldn't have to give up my gun for another big belly just yet. I'd worked hard enough to get back into the job the last time, I wasn't ready to give it up now. I gave the stick one last glance before pitching it casually into the trashcan.

Six weeks of worrying finally over. A month and a half of fears and doubts hanging over my head only finally to be put out of my misery.

I opened the door and stepped out into the light. It was bright and sunny in the bakery and for the first time in a long time I could actually enjoy it. The smells of the pastry and doughnuts no longer set my stomach on edge and I found myself thinking, "Oh hey, so this is what hunger feels like," once again.

"BOO!" I jumped when he came up behind me, turning sharply to smack him in the side of his head.

"Dammit Bosco!" I yelled, my heart racing, "Do you ALWAYS have to be such an ass?"

"Do you always have to be such a spoilsport?"

Maurice Boscorelli.

My partner in crime - literally. I called him "Bosco" he called me "Keener", even though my real name is Amy. It was our own unique little way of maintaining some privacy out on the streets.

Bosco and I had been partners for 3 years and we had the same kind of love/hate relationship a person might have with their brother or sister. You know... you hate them so much you actually love them... that kind?

I shook my head and rolled my eyes at him. "You're such a child, you know that? Are you ready to go?"

"What?" He gulped holding up his half-eaten, chocolate frosted, gooey glazed doughnut, "You don't want a doughnut!? What's wrong with you?"

It was all I could do to say no to the sweet treat. But at last, thinking back to the fact that I wasn't planning on growing a gut or eating for two anytime real soon, I refused.

"Not hungry."

He gave me an odd look and shook his head.

"Your loss," He said as he polished off the last bite and wiped his dirty fingers on the leg of his pants. I rolled my eyes at him again. It was like working with a 3-year-old.

I picked up a napkin from the counter and handed it to him. "How about trying one of these next time."

"Naw," he said laughing as he pretended to blow his nose and hand the napkin back to me, "I'm trying to save the trees."

I rolled my eyes as he smirked, "Imbocile."

At that moment a voice came over our walkie talkies... "Unit 10, do you copy?"

Bosco flipped his walkie talkie out of his belt, "Unit 10 to S.T. 5, over."

"Unit 10 we need you to investigate a possible homicide at 455 Madison Avenue, over."

I looked at Boscorelli and he raised his eyebrows towards me, "The Palace?"

I nodded. That was indeed the address of the posh New York City hotel. I could only imagine what kind of chaos we were about to step into.

Howie Dorough sat on the couch of his hotel room in New York City. He shivered uncontrollably, his body wracked with the aftershocks of the sobs he could no longer release. He'd cried for hours... and if he had the tears to cry anymore he could probably continue for days.

He stared down at the splatters of blood that had soaked into a large area of the ugly tan carpeted floor, running into the huge puddle before him. A chill run down his spine as he thought about the moments that had brought him here, to this.

How in the hell had this happened? How in the hell had he ended up here, sitting on a couch in one of the nicest hotel rooms in on of his absolute favorite cities, staring at these blood stains on this ugly tan carpet?

And could those blood stains really belong to one of his very best friends.

Nick Carter sat on the edge of his own hotel bed, across the hall in suite separated from Howie. He had his face buried in his hands and he sniffled every now and then. This was his desperate attempt to hold back the flood of tears threatening to spill from within. The flood of tears he'd refused to release because he knew releasing them would only make this even more real than it already was.

He wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of that hotel, far away from the blood and the gruesomeness of it all. Away from the pain and the sorrow and the sadness that what should have been a joyful day, had ended up throwing their way.

He raised his head and stared at the police officer standing beside the doorway.

Guarding the doorway.

It was sad to think he actually hated a woman he didn't even know, but in that moment, he did. All he wanted to do was leave this God-awful place and find his friend and she was the only one standing in his way.

He knew that somewhere beyond that door, in pain and agony, suffering and alone without the people who loved him most in the world, was one of his brothers. For a brief moment he seriously contemplated kneeing the officer in the crotch and running like hell, but he knew that would only end in an ugly manner and get him absolutely nowhere. Instead, he would have to just keep on sitting there, waiting.

He turned instead and stared at the door to the bedroom. That's where they'd taken Brian. Taken him for 'questioning'... for what Nick didn't really know... or why. He just knew he wanted out of that hotel soon or he would surely lose his mind.

Brian Littrell sat in silence on the other side of the bedroom door. The large police officer loomed over him like a giant. His heart beat fast enough he felt it might actually fail him.

He remembered everything and he needed to get it all off his chest, and yet he didn't want to talk about it just then, or probably ever. All he wanted was to get to the hospital and find AJ. He knew in his heart his friend would be okay. He had to be okay.

He stared up at the police officer for a moment and sighed deeply, he had no idea how long he'd been waiting, but it felt like forever.

"You will have to speak to the detectives when they get here," the officer had told him after closing the door to the bedroom and having him sit in the small desk chair in the corner of the room. "We are detaining you for questioning."

His heart had died a little just then. Why him? He loved AJ. Aj was one of his best friends... his brother. He would never hurt him.

"What are you talking about??" He'd shouted at the officer in defense when he'd realized they were considering him a suspect... "I was there... the guy... I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!"

The cop just shook his head and put his finger to his lips. "If I were you son," he'd said in a condescending tone that made Brian's skin crawl, "I'd wait until my lawyer was present."

Brian had wanted to punch the man right in his face at that moment. How could he... how dare he? Brian vividly remembered the entire thing. He shuddered. In fact it would probably haunt him for the rest of his days...

He heard the pops before he was even fully awake. They sounded different to him, as if in his dreams, which wasn't an impossibility since he'd been sleeping peacefully up until that moment.

He curled into a ball as he tried to drift off, but then, there it was again... and this time it didn't sound so distant anymore. He didn't open his eyes right away, for fear of what his mind was telling him the noise had been. It sounded like gunshots... gunshots from very close by.

And then, he felt a hand around his neck and a sharp sensation as he was punched hard in the stomach. He opened his eyes and there staring back at him was a figure... a man. He only knew it was a man from the beard. He wore a masquerade type mask over the rest of his face which covered any other distinguishing features.

He couldn't scream, he couldn't speak... he could barely breathe. The man held the gun to his head and as he felt the walls begin to close in on him and the room begin to spin, the man pulled the trigger.

He screamed. Nothing happened.

The man pulled the trigger again and again as he struggled with him over the gun and eventually kicked him as hard as he could in the groin. The man yelped and finally, giving up, turned and ran for the door.

He jumped out of bed, the room still spinning precariously around him and screamed out into the hall for someone to help him. He was hurting bad. He'd been punched and kicked repeatedly in the stomach and his body was on fire. He hollered for Aj who should have been in the next room but no one moved and no one answered, and that's when he saw him... lying there on the floor...

Brian shook his head immediately and put his hand to his sore neck as the thoughts began to creep back in. He didn't want to picture the scene he'd witnessed earlier that day. The blood pouring steadily from his Aj's body as he moaned in agony on the floor of their hotel room. Brian had screamed so loud that nearly their entire floor had ended up in their room, people crowding around the two of them, as they felt for a pulse and tried to figure out if Aj was even alive. He was, thank God. Brian remembered that much of those moments, but nothing else.

He remembered Howie waking him up from his passed out stupor a few minutes after Aj had been loaded onto the ambulance and asking him what the hell had happened. But even though Brian could remember full well, he couldn't tell them... he didn't get the chance.

Screams had come from another room down the hall and everyone had flocked to see what had occured. They were coming from the room of their tour manager, Jim Claron... who was dead.

Brian leaned back in his chair, his head still spinning with the days events and tried to keep his mind focused on one small crack in the ceiling. Anything but the blood and the gore. He couldn't think about Aj... not now anyway.

All he could think about right now was living long enough to get the hell out of this hotel room.

I flipped through the stations on the cruiser radio several times before coming to a stop on Phil Collins' song. I paused for a moment, hesitating and considering changing the station before deciding instead to go ahead and listen. I leaned back in my seat and rested my head against the warm leather, watching out the windows as New York city passed us by. I hummed quietly to myself and tried to hold back the tears as I thought back on those beautiful years the melody reminded me of.

I saw Bosco out of the corner of my eye, we'd stopped at a red light and he was reaching up to flip the station. I gently smacked his wrist with my hand.

"Don't," I warned him as he shot me a look from the driver's seat.

"But I'm driving!" He whined as he reached forward again, "Driver controls radio... that's always been our rule."

I smacked him again. Not this time he didn't.

"I want to listen to this song Bosco... please." The tears were starting to trickle down my face and though I did my best to hide them behind my sunglasses, I realized he'd caught me when he stopped and stared a little longer than he normally would.

"You okay?" He asked in a concerned voice as he leaned forward again and this time turned the volume down instead of changing the station. I didn't care anymore though. I was just relieved the song had finally ended. The memories however, would never fade.

I nodded. "I'm okay Bosco."

He didn't look at all convinced. I tried my best to smile but any attempt was futile so I took a stab at honesty instead.

"I used to... no we used to sing that song to Alyssa... when she was little."

I felt his hand gently come to rest on my knee. I didn't talk about my daughter often but when I did Bosco was always willing to lend a listening ear. He could certainly get on my nerves, my partner, but he definitely had a caring and sensitive side that showed through when it was most needed. I wiped my eyes on the back of my suit jacket sleeve and settled back in my seat again.

It had been almost seven years since my daughter had passed away. Seven long, difficult years and they never seemed to get easier. I'd always naively believed that as a police officer I would be immune to the suffering that I saw in my line of work on a daily basis. Sure, i'd known all along that something could happen to me... that something could always happen to me, but I'd fallen in love and gotten married young and we'd had the fairytale relationship, and the beautiful daughter and the life that everyone dreams about and in a heartbeat it had slipped away.

Not that my life now was anything to really complain about... I had a loving husband and two gorgeous and wonderful children... but it was different... I was different. Life had dealt me the hardest of blows and I'd never really gotten over it.

"Are you sure there's nothing you want to talk about Amy?" Bosco asked as he finally removed his hand from it's position of comfort on my knee and traffic began moving again. It was one thing I missed about being a regular old police officer... we never got anywhere fast. In our line of work there was never a real need for speed and lights and sirens. The fact of the matter was, you were unlikely to find your victim any more or less dead when you reached your destination as they were when you received your call... so we rarely rushed.

I shook my head in response to his question, "Naw, why do you ask?"

He reached over beside him and pulled a box out of his door... "Because," he said as he held it up and I gasped slightly, "you left this sitting in the floor of the cruiser."

He was holding the box to my pregnancy test. The test I'd taken great precautions to hide from everyone I knew, and their brother. I must have forgotten to slip it back into my purse when I'd shimmied the test out and stuck it in my pocket. I rolled my eyes at him and shook my head, "Nope." I replied finally holding my hands up in mock defeat, "nothing to talk about."

"So you and Jimmy... you're not?" He asked as if it was any of his business. I shook my head again.

"Not pregnant and totally okay with it. We aren't really prepared for another baby anyway."

He nodded and handed me the box. I wasn't sure why I'd felt the need to air my dirty laundry to him. Perhaps the fact that I wanted it off my chest, or just that I trusted him more than about anyone else in my life, but now he knew, and besides, it was the truth, even if a scewed version. Jimmy and I had two children and a rocky relationship, mainly because of me and my personal issues, and we were in no position to be adding to our already stressed lives.

"455 Madison Avenue," Bosco proclaimed as he pulled the cruiser up in front of the massive and gorgeous hotel. I took a moment to look around at the structure and what was happening surrounding the building... it was a detective thing I guess, something I always did. Obviously this was a ritzy hotel. Any other murder at any other place, at any other time would have been swarming with cops and detectives and bystanders, but not here. It was clear that the hotel had gone to lengths to keep things quiet, at least for the moment. The coroner's van was parked in the alley alongside the building with two police cruisers and there were two cruisers parked in front of the building. Unlike in other situations there were not dozens of people standing on the sidewalk chatting about the murder. If only I'd realized then who we were dealing with... and what the scene would look like in a few hours...

I looked at the cruisers sitting on the street in front of the building and groaned.

"What?" Bosco asked when he heard my expression of disgust.

"Check out our company," I replied as I pointed to the cruiser I'd recognized moments before as belonging to officers Ty Davis and Brendan Finney, and rolled my eyes. I was not in the mood to see him today.

"Yay!" Bosco cheered as he quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and hopped out the door, "Looks like our buddies from the 55th precinct are in the house!"

Yep. This was going to be a long day.

Howie continued to stare down at the blood stain that had now pretty much fully soaked into the carpet of room 1506. He'd long shed every last tear he could manage to cry and his sobs had inevitably slowed to painful shuddering breaths. He leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples vigorously with the index fingers of both hands as he tried to rid his brain of the awful headache now upon him. He opened his eyes again momentarily and stared at the clock on the wall. 10:15 am. He'd been sitting in that exact spot on that couch for nearly an hour. It seemed to him that the continous stream of law enforcement officers in and out of the room were accomplishing nothing.

He watched as a young man walked into the room and peered down at the stain on the floor before looking over towards where he sat in his permanent spot on the couch and shaking his head sorrowfully before turning and walking out the door again. He'd always had the vision of the heroic police officers, running into the scenes and saving lives and protecting the innocent victims... protecting the bystanders... somehow feeling sorry for the family and friends. But it didn't seem to be the way things were. Everyone was a suspect in their minds. Everyone of them received questionable looks and none of them would be allowed to move or talk or barely breathe without permission until the detectives arrived to question them.

He sighed and closed his eyes again. He'd asked, no begged, numerous times for the smallest update on his friend. No one would let them know what his condition was. It was impossible to believe that someone they all loved and cared about... their brother... was stuck in a hospital somewhere, in pain and possibly even dying and they couldn't be there to comfort him. There was no one there for Aj.

He looked over towards the officer that had apparently been set up to guard him and rolled his eyes at the man. He'd asked for just one phonecall, the man had refused. If he could call someone, anyone... even a friend to let them know where Aj was... he didn't want him to be alone anymore. The man had crossed his arms at Howie and denied him harshly the simple request. Over and over again and again he'd been told they'd release them after and ONLY after they'd been questioned.

Howie didn't understand why any of them would even be considered suspects. They loved Aj... all of them. He was their brother and he knew in his deepest heart that none of them would ever dream of hurting their brother. He looked at the officer again... obviously this guy wasn't aware of that.

Howie thought back on the moment it had all happened. He'd been laying in bed in his own hotel room, staring up at the ceiling trying to fall back to sleep after a phonecall from his sister had woken him up. He'd heard the scream... he'd known immediately it was Brian. He'd jumped out of bed in nothing but his boxers and his t-shirt and torn through his hotel room, flinging the door open and flying down the hall. He would never forget the moment he walked through the door or the sight that met his eyes. It was horrible. Blood... everywhere there had been blood. Brian was screaming in the middle of the floor, his face pale, his eyes moist with tears. Howie had done the only thing he'd known in his heart to do, he'd knelt down on the floor beside his brother and held his hands tightly over the wound as blood gushed from the young mans abdomen. Blood mixed with sweat mixed with tears and the next thing he knew Brian had collapsed on the floor beside him and people were rushing into the room.

He opened his eyes quickly in attempt to erase the vision from his overly distraught mind. He needed to see Aj, to know if his friend was alive and okay. He needed to be in the hospital and not here in this hotel room sitting on a damned couch staring at a damned stain on the floor.

"Officer Finney?" He looked at the officer's name tag and asked in a voice so weak he barely recognized it as his own, "When can I go to my friend? I have to know if he's okay."

The man just shook his head and stared off in another direction... but he didn't balk or glare accusingly in his direction as he'd done earlier in the morning. Perhaps he was softening from the hour they'd spent sitting in the room together. "You can see him after questioning," He finally replied never looking over towards Howie, "the detectives are on their way up now."

The moment I stepped out of our cruiser he was standing there. I groaned inwardly... but I should have known... should have come to expect it after all these years. Ty Davis Jr. and Maurice Boscorelli, as utterly and completely different as the two of the them had always been and as much as they seemed to steer clear of one another during our years together on the force, had somehow become the best of friends. And how ironic is that... that my partner was now best friends with the one man I could not even look in the eye?

"'Sup Bosco!" Davis waved as he wandered over from the grand entrace of the immaculate hotel and offered Bosco a quick high five... followed by their routine handshake, pat on the back, hug thingie -- the kind of goofy friendship shake I'd always believed boys grew out of sometime before they graduated high school. How wrong I had been.

"Amy," He said turning towards me and offering a hand in greeting. I just nodded and turned away from him towards the massive building we were now standing in front of. I couldn't bring myself to look at him... especially not into those eyes - those constantly prying eyes. They always seemed to be searching for information I was unwilling to give.

"What are we dealing with here?" I asked trying to take my mind off of my own troubles and focus on the task at hand. I hated being put in this position. I hated having to struggle my way out of my personal life to deal with my professional one. It sucked.

Davis seemed to understand though and for that I was grateful. "Possible double homocide." He began as we walked towards the building together. "15th floor, one DOA, one at the hospital in critical condition... it doesn't look good."

"There's always hope," I said, rolling my eyes as I found myself annoyed with his lack of faith. One thing I couldn't stand was when my fellow officers and detectives got ahead of themselves. There was always hope. If I knew anything at all from working in this line of duty it was that no situation was a lost cause. Bosco gave me an odd look and shook his head... okay, so maybe I was the only one who felt that way, but at least it got me through the day.

"Oh," Ty continued, "And get this! You'll never believe who we're dealing with at the moment for possible suspects..."

"Who?" Bosco asked as the three of us stepped onto the elevator and he pushed the button for the 15th floor.

"The freaking Backstreet Boys."

I sighed and watched as my partner nearly fell over double with laughter. "You're shitting me right? The Backstreet Boys?"

Davis nodded and I swung my hand out and struck Bosco in the back of the head. It wasn't funny. No matter who we were dealing with, murder would never be funny.

"Awesome." I sighed again, knowing that now we were dealing with a high profile case. A case that could and probably would take weeks, or months, or hell even years to wrap up. The last high profile case I'd worked on had taken 8 long months and had led me through hell and back.

"Do you really think they had anything to do with it?" Bosco asked as the elevator dinged and we stepped out onto the floor that, unlike the outside of the hotel, was buzzing with activity, police lines, reporters, detectives and officers. I rolled my eyes at my partner. Why was he asking Davis that question anyway... that was for us to figure out and decide.

Davis thankfully just shrugged. "No idea dude."

I watched as Davis led Bosco into room 1506 and I was led down the hall a little further to room 1510. I would never forget the sight that met my eyes walking into the room that morning. Blood was splattered throughout the room... and then there was the body, or what was left of the body, laying there on the floor... the brutality of it all... it was horrible.

Nick Carter sat on the bed in the room across the hall from where one of his best friends had been shot and he continued to cry. He wondered silently to himself if his tears would ever end... if he would ever be able to stop crying. And then he thought that it was good to cry because it meant that he was alive and crying was good because crying meant that you could still feel and he would certainly rather feel something than nothing because he would certainly rather be alive than dead.

The memories of the things he'd seen that morning replayed themselves continuously through his exhausted mind. He'd been downstairs in the hotel coffee shop when everything had happened... at least that's where he assumed he had been... this all still felt like a dream to him. He remembered getting up and he remembered going down in the elevator to the coffee shop and he remembered sitting down and drinking a nice strong cup of black coffee even though he hated coffee... because the conversation he'd had on the phone with his mother the night before had kept him up nearly the entire night worrying over the fact that in her mind he was still a 'nothing'. But that didn't seem to matter anymore. Not right now at least because his friend had been shot and his tour manager was dead.

He'd remembered sitting there drinking his coffee and chatting with the waitress who seemed nice enough even if she obviously knew who he was and was probably even a fan. She had tried her best not to show it and Nick had been grateful to her for that. He'd remembered nearly falling asleep sitting there alone at his table in the coffee shop that was pretty much empty at that time of the morning and he remembered thinking he should probably head back up to his room and try to get a few hours sleep before the busy day they had ahead of them.

Nick stared through his blurry eyes at the clock on the bedside stand. Not that his busy schedule seemed to matter to anyone, anymore. It didn't even seem to matter to these people that their friend was dying.

The last thing Nick had remembered before all of the chaos occured was clamboring wearily onto the elevator and punching the button for the 15th floor..

He rode up in silence and waited as the doors opened slowly on the 15th floor. And that was when he'd heard the screams... Brian's screams and Howie's screams. He hadn't heard Aj's screams... not a sound had come from him. He'd run towards the room but there were already too many people crowded around for him to see what was going on. People were screaming frantically for someone to call an ambulance and he'd all but panicked because he didn't understand what was happening.

And then it had happened.

That awful, blood curdling, ear piercing scream had started up down the hall and Nick had been the first to turn and run towards the sound because as it had come to happen he was the last in a line of people standing in the doorway of Brian and Aj's hotel room and he was the closest to the sound.

He'd run down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him and she'd nearly collapsed into his arms as she flew from their hotel room. He recognized her immediately as Cynthia Claron... Jim's wife... Jim, their tour manager. She had struggled to find the words, to say anything at all to make him understand. He'd passed her off to another crew member, one he recognized behind him and had carefully opened the door to her hotel room. The sight before him had made him gasp and wretch and he'd had to turn away and run quickly from the room.

He would never in a million, billion years forget how awful that sight had been. How could anyone be so cruel? How could anyone do anything so horrible to another human being? He'd run into his own hotel room and spent the next fifteen minutes vomiting profusely as the police arrived and the paramedics arrived and they took Aj away and he still had not seen his brother. He still had no real idea what was going on. He just knew that if it was that bad... if God forbid what they had done to Aj was that bad...

He winced as his stomach lurched and the tears started flowing again. He couldn't think about that now.

He stared over at the burly female police officer again. Her name was Faith Yokus. He knew that now and she no longer seemed as angry or as harsh as she had when she first arrived. Perhaps it was the emotions that the young man continuously showed or perhaps on those numerous trips she'd taken from the room, she too had to view the scene of horror with her own eyes. Nick hated showing his emotions in front of anyone but right now he didn't care.

"Whoever did this..." Nick thought to himself as he silently wiped away more tears... "Whoever did this to my friend... to my manager... was an unfeeling bastard."

And because of those thoughts he knew that crying meant he felt something and he knew that feeling something was far better than feeling nothing at all. And so he allowed himself to cry... allowed himself to feel the pain... to be alive... to not be an unfeeling bastard.

Brian glanced up slowly when the man entered the room. He was young and Brian could sense immediately that he was full of himself. He wore a suit and a cocky expression... not like the others who had come and gone. He seemed different. He nodded towards Brian and Brian nodded back in silence. He had no idea who this man was or what his purpose in this whole mess was supposed to be, but judging from the look on his face -- all business... no pleasure, and the gun that glared from his belt in the sunlight when he went to stick his hands deep into his pockets -- he must have some purpose in all of this... some reason for being here.

"Brian Littrell?" The man asked and Brian's heart leapt into his throat at the mention of his own name... because how did this man know his name? He certainly hadn't told him... and why was he saying it out loud for anyone within earshot to hear?

In Brian's mind this was all a sick joke... a really perverted and twisted joke and he was sitting here like a damned fool still waiting on the punchline. He was waiting... just waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind a door or a wall and yell "Punk'd" and when he did... so help him, when he did... boy would he be ready to punch that asshole in the face.

Then again, maybe he wasn't so much waiting anymore as he was hoping. Hoping and praying that this was all just some twisted and fucked up joke... or maybe it was just a nightmare... a horrible, God-awful nightmare that would end in a scream with him waking up in a pool of sweat and tears and he would run for the bathroom and puke his guts up because that... that was exactly what he felt like doing right at this moment.

"Mr. Littrell?" The voice shook him from his thoughts and jerked him harshly back to the icy despair that was reality... where nothing was a joke and you didn't just wake up from your nightmares.

"Are you okay sir?"

What the fuck kind of question was that? And no. No he was not okay. No he was most certainly fucking not okay.

And where was all of this coming from? Wasn't he supposed to be the strong one? The one with all the faith? Not anymore... not this Brian... he was done being the strong faithful one. This was all way too fucked up for that.

"No." He finally answered, afraid of what might come if he stayed silent too much longer. The last thing he needed was for the cops to say he was guilty on account of he couldn't say otherwise because he straight up refused to speak. This was all too messed up... too messed up to deal with anymore.

The man looked at him again and this time his face seemed to soften a bit.

"I'm detective Boscorelli," the man finally said after a few moments of silence during which Brian was sure he could actually hear his heart beating within his chest... it was that loud. He extended his hand to Brian and Brian returned the gesture quickly, reaching back and wincing in pain, inhaling sharply as the injuries to his stomach protested his movements.

"Are you injured?" The detective asked, concern written all over his face as he motioned for Brian to sit back down on the couch and quickly removed his radio from his belt. Brian could only nod. He hadn't realized until that exact moment just how much pain he was in. His head hurt, his neck hurt, his back hurt, his stomach hurt... his entire body hurt. He had no idea why but the blinding pain that struck was so fast but he knew it was horrible. Perhaps the adrenaline over the past few hours had held the pain at bay... perhaps it was sitting in one position for so long... whatever it was, when he moved to shake that man's hand... all hell broke lose.

He'd only thought things were fucked up before... this... this was far more fucked up than he'd ever imagined things could get.

The last thing he remembered was Detective Boscorelli standing above him calling for an ambulance over his radio... then there was a blinding pain and white light and that was all he could remember.

I'd been knee deep in my own investigation when I heard the sound of Bosco's voice yelling out from my belt loop. He was calling for a bus and I knew in that moment that things could not be good. Bosco rarely took anything seriously and when he did... well then you knew it must be serious. I took one final glance around the room and shuddered at the sight I'd been trying my best to keep my mind on of for the past half hour. Now what I needed was to get far away from all of it. This had to be one of the most horrid investigations I'd yet to encounter. I pulled myself up off a spot I'd taken on the floor and made my way out into the hallway. I could use this moment to check up on my partner and take a much needed break from the gore.

I'd spent that half hour taking blood samples and dusting for fingerprints and trying to come up with any small bits and pieces of evidence I could possibly find and from what I could see already this sicko hadn't been too cautious. There were bloody handprints scattered about the entire room and I'd even managed to find the knife he'd used to... well... nevermind. Let's just say I'd found the knife he'd apparently used to commit part of his crime.

Bosco had been given the job of interviewing our witnesses and from the sounds of things, at least from what I'd just heard over my radio, that wasn't going too well. Two witnesses were already in the hospital, one having been shot and stabbed and nearly murdered himself... the other having suffered an apparent breakdown, which wasn't at all unusual given the nature of her husband's death. I could only imagine where I would be in the same set of circumstances. Another witness was about to be taken in, for reasons unknown to me... and of course, our best witness was currently on his way down the elevator in a body bag.

I stood out in the hall and tried to take deep breaths. This was my ritual... trying to rid myself of the evil horrors I'd seen in that hotel room. My eyes focused in on Davis as he stepped out of the room across the hall and looked my way. "You okay?" He asked as the elevator doors opened and the paramedics, my husband included, began to file out with their gurney. I had to roll my eyes at the irony of this entire situation and simply nod my head.

"That was brutal in there," I answered, pointing towards the room and trying my best to be civil to Ty. I watched as my husband pushed his way out of the elevator and gave Ty a small sideways glance before turning towards me and smiling. I smiled back and waved. "Hey babe," he said as he pushed the gurney off on his fellow medics and walked over to say hello. It wasn't often Jimmy and I ran into each other at work, but we considered it a fate meeting whenever we did and we always stopped momentarily to say hello.

"Hey hun," I smiled and watched as Davis and now Finney who had joined him in the doorway made gaggy faces behind Jimmy's back. I stuck my tongue out at the two of them. Jimmy pulled away after giving me a quick kiss and I followed him in the direction of the room Bosco was in. Before I even made it in the room the other two medics were wheeling a young man out on a stretcher and Bosco was following close on their heels. The young man was in obvious pain... pain that I could almost feel just by looking in his eyes.

"What the hell happened in there?" I asked Bosco as he leaned over and whispered something in Jimmy's ear before the three men pushed the gurney back onto the elevator and disappeared behind the closing doors.

"That was insane," Bosco finally replied turning towards me, his face red and his eyes not doing well to hide how pissed off he really was, "absolutely fucking insane!"

"What happened?"

"He was hurt Amy!" Bosco rarely called me by my first name and when he did he meant business. "Where the fuck is the chief? What kind of show do they think they're running here anyway? That kid was seriously fucking hurt and they didn't even bother to take him to the hospital! What the fuck!"

Wow. I had rarely seen Bosco so emotional over a witness. In facy, rarely had I ever seen Bosco emotional period. But then I had to go back and remember what the young man had been through himself... in that hospital the day he was shot... Bosco had been through all sorts of hell in his own life too. There was no denying that and something here had triggered his emotions.

"Bosco calm down."

At that moment Faith Yokas stepped out into the hallway to ask what all the commotion was about. She knew immediately when she saw Bosco upset that something was wrong. He'd been her partner for years before he'd been mine and she'd been there that fateful day.

"Where the fuck is the chief?" Bosco asked again as he reached a hand towards his radio and started removing it once more from his belt. Yokas stopped him and pointed... "He's right there."

And sure enough, there he was... walking down the hall towards the three of us as if nothing in the world was going wrong this day. And Yokas and I both looked at Bosco at the same moment and I could tell we were both sensing the same thing... that all hell was about to break lose.

"Is there a problem Boscorelli?" The chief asked as he cautiously approached us from the room he'd been in the whole time.

"Yeah there's a problem." Bosco replied, clearly losing his patience. The problem was no one knew what was eating him or why and I knew what was going to happen... that Bosco was going to jump straight down the chief's throat before anyone had a chance to stop him and it would all be because something in his past was still eating at him.

"What's that?" The chief asked.

"The problem," Bosco said growing redder and obviously angrier by the second, "is that Brian Littrell, the young man I was just supposed to interview was obviously badly injured... but did you give a fuck? No. You didn't. You and your guys came in here all high and fucking mighty and you cleared this place out and you named your suspects and you made them sit there asses down and you left them there. You left them there knowing their friend may be dying and you left them there knowing that they may be dying and you... YOU don't give a shit."

And there it was. Bosco's past. Coming back once more to eat at everyone around him. Bosco blamed everyone but himself for what happened in that hospital that day. It didn't matter that it was a gang of lunatics who shot him... or that Faith Yokas single handedly saved his life... or that everyone and their brother prayed for him and visited him and wanted him to get better. Nope. All that mattered is that everyone but Faith Yokas left him alone in that room to die. And in his mind Faith owed him because he was trying to save her when he got shot. It didn't matter that there were still madmen on the loose or that other people's lives were in danger... all that mattered was that no one cared enough to go back and save Maurice Boscorelli.

And even though they all knew that wasn't what it was really all about... that it was really all about Bosco's insecurities... it was what Bosco made it all about.

The Chief just sighed and shook his head. "They were never suspects Boscorelli."

He looked up at him and snorted, "What?"

"They were never suspects. And no... we didn't know that Brian was hurt... he never said anything about it."

And in that moment I saw Bosco's face fall and I wanted to reach out and pull him close and hug him... but I knew that would only push him farther away.

"We kept them all here because we had reason to believe that their lives were in danger Bosco. That if we let them all go to the hospital to be with their friend... that something would happen to one or all of them. And that... we couldn't let happen."

Bosco didn't say another word. He turned silently and walked back into the room he'd been in with Brian, shutting the door behind him.

"I'm sorry about my partner chief." I said as I too turned to walk away from the entire situation.

"Me too." The chief said... "me too."

It had been several hours since it all went down and now the two remaining men -- the two left standing -- were stuck in what the younger one now refered to as the 'hotel of despair', seated on a couch together in yet another room on the 15th floor. Together as they were in the physical sense... they were totally and seperately alone in their thoughts.

One was stuck in the moment of finding his friend lying lifeless on the floor of room 1506. Stuck with the memory of folding his hands over those wounds and praying like hell as the blood still continued to seep through. And the screaming... God the screaming. He was stuck with the image of that God-awful look on Brian's face as the blood still ran between his fingers and he couldn't reach out and he couldn't help and he could only watch as Aj's blood seeped and Brian fell there in a heap on the floor beside him. And now... right now... he was only grateful for the fact that they'd finally freed him from the confines of the hell that was that room, with the ugly tan carpet, now stained a brilliant blood red. And maybe... maybe if he thought hard enough and long enough he'd be grateful to be alive too.

The other was stuck with knowing too little, and seeing to much. And those two things... those were tearing him up inside. He needed to know if Brian and Aj were okay. He hadn't been there, hadn't seen it with his own eyes and looking at his friend sitting next to him on the couch, the one who had been there and had seen it all... he dare not ask. And he'd seen too much in the room down the hall and the thoughts turned his stomach and made him feel like curling up in a ball and giving up on the entire human race because he still had yet to figure out how anyone... anyone... could do something like that to another human being. And he was grateful to be alive but he was starting to believe that death would be easier than living with the thoughts of the things he'd seen, and that... that scared him almost as much as the things he'd seen because he wouldn't let them win. And boy wasn't he tired... and wouldn't all of this be easier if he could just crawl into that bed over there, cover himself with the blankets and block out the world. Maybe then he could wake up tomorrow and it would all be different.

And the other two people sitting in the room across from the two young men who were lost in their own thoughts -- Detectives Boscorelli and Keenerson. And if asked at that exact moment the two of them would have told you they were no closer to solving this mystery than they were the moment they stepped into that hotel 2 hours ago... and that they had no real idea whether these two men were in any real danger either and that wasn't a good feeling.

They'd been sitting in this room for a good 15 minutes, just watching the two young men as they sat in silence. Bosco still stewed over his breakdown in the hallway but Keener knew like any good detective... and if there was one thing Bosco was it was a good detective... that he would get over it quickly enough to do his job effectively. She watched the young men, sitting there across from her on the couch, the blonde with eyes full of tears, the older man's bloodshot, and her heart nearly broke for them. Her co-workers always said Amy had the exterior of a rough and tough detective, but on the inside she was all heart and they were right because she could see the pain in their eyes and feel the sorrow in their hearts and the weights on their shoulders and it nearly broke that tough exterior. After all, she too had seen that room and the things this person had done... the pain he'd inflicted, and she knew it had to be weighing hard on these two men and she wanted to let them go and see their friends but she also knew that their lives may still be in danger and her job was not to be their friend and to make them feel better... her job was to protect them.

Boscorelli looked over towards her and nodded... she nodded back. It was time to get this investigation underway and that meant it was time for these two young men to share their thoughts.

She looked towards them again. It was not going to be easy.

He was floating... or at least that's how he felt. Like he was floating high above the earth and he was weightless and free from the agony and the feelings of hopelessness and despair that shrouded his friends. He could no longer feel any pain. He only felt numb. Numbness... and a cool breeze... and the air here was fresh and he felt like he was lying on a blanket of clouds and that made sense to him because he was pretty certain that he was floating way up above the clouds, up high in the Heavens, far away from the pain and the agony... and the earth. And he was pretty sure now that he must be dead... because wouldn't this be what dying felt like?

If this was Heaven though, he thought to himself... it was awfully dark... and very quiet. Only a steady hum of noise and nothing else. Except what was that beep? And wasn't that a voice? And now... come to think of it, he wasn't quite so numb... and the pain... oh God the pain. And he tried to scream, but he couldn't release a sound and he tried to breathe but there was something there stopping him and his throat hurt and his head, it hurt too and the worst of the pain was centered in his stomach and he was pretty sure his every muscle would hurt if he could feel his every muscle but some of them still seemed... numb. And he was pretty sure that down here out of those clouds, nothing should feel numb.

And then the darkness faded away and the lights were so bright. Far too bright.

And he felt so alone.

And the struggle began. The struggle to breathe and the struggle to move. The struggle to scream and the struggle to stay alive.

And all at once faces appeared above him and he wanted to say something, anything. To tell them how afraid he was and how much pain he was in but that thing in his throat... that thing that hurt and made it so that he could not breathe, it stopped him and all he could do was open his eyes so wide in horror and hope they could read his mind. And it seemed to work.

"Mr. McLean," he heard the voice before the woman's kind face came into view and he could only nod in response as the tears trickled down his face.

"You're in the hospital... you were in an accident."

And all he could do was nod again even though he couldn't remember and he didn't know and he wondered what the hell kind of accident could make him hurt so damn bad. And he hurt. And the pain was growing worse and the tears were falling faster and yet another face appeared above him.

"We're giving you some medicine to help with the pain."

"Thank you." He said it with his eyes... the only way he knew how.

And he was floating... or at least that's how he felt. Like he was floating high above the earth and he could no longer feel any pain. And he was happy there. And if he had his way he may stay there forever and never come back.

He was cold... so cold. And he was so alone. And he wanted so badly to crawl out of his bed in what he could only assume was the most private area of the emergency room in some New York City hospital, and go off in search of his brother. He knew Aj had to be there somewhere. Somewhere very close. And yet he still felt so very far away.

His pain and the cold weren't what kept him from attempting an escape though. He may very well have crawled out of his bed and gone in search for Aj if it hadn't been for the guards. The pain and the cold were nothing compared to the two massive police officers standing guard in his doorway. They were bigger than any of their bodyguards had ever been, and they were meaner looking too. And these two guys - Brian dare not mess with either of them, especially if their purpose in all of this was, and he believed it was, to protect him.

He hadn't feared for his life, at least not really, until the moment the ambulance had pulled up in front of the hospital. He'd spent the entire morning in a rush of adrenaline and emotions, terrified about Aj and trying not to think about what had happened, and in all of the chaos he'd not thought much about his own mortality. But when they pulled up to the hospital, and those two, burly, mean-looking officers, fully clad in bulletproof vests and helmets, stepped into the back of the ambulance where he was lying helpless on a stretcher, hooked up to iv's and being pumped full of pain killers, to warn him about the possibility of a "lurking suspect" and the risks now associated with being Brian Littrell... that was when the realization hit him. And it hit him hard. He had nearly died. He could have died. And in truth, he probably should have died.

And even then, even after the miracle of his survival against the attacker, even those two huge officers couldn't guarantee his safety. But they would assure him they'd 'do their best' to not let anything happen to him... and that would have to be enough.

And he'd remembered when they wheeled him out of the ambulance and he saw the flashes of light from the photographer's cameras and he heard the questions being screamed at him by reporters, how scared he had been in that moment. But not for his life. Instead, he had imagined his wife sitting home alone in Georgia, and turning on the television and there on her screen would be a picture of him on a stretcher and what would the caption say? What could the caption possibly say?

Aj had been shot and their manager murdered... Brian himself was badly injured... and what little information the media knew, they would release. Like vultures sent to suck out the very smallest marrow from the bone of a story, even if the story hadn't yet fully developed. And his wife would watch the news... or his mother. And there he'd be on the stretcher and the caption would read something along the lines of a "Backstreet Murder" or "Backstreet Boy Shot: Critical Condition" and how would they feel? How the hell would that make anyone feel?

He laid there in the bed, the bed that still felt icy cold despite the three heated blankets covering his weakened body, and he thought about what it would feel like to find out that your loved one had been injured... or worse... had been killed, while you're watching tv. He glanced around the room, taking in the various bits of hospital equipment. This was unlike the hospital rooms he'd been in before. There were no windows with views of the city. No flowers with get well wishes. No balloons, no cards, no television to keep him occupied. And the worst of all, there was no phone. No phone to call his wife or his mother to let them know he was alive.

Just when he thought his entire body would go numb from the cold a nurse poked her head in the room past one of the mean-looking bodyguards.

"Mr. Littrell," she said with a smile as she walked into the room with an iv and a clipboard in her arms, "you're awake."

He nodded in response, still leary of any stranger. Still waiting for the next person who entered the room to pull out a gun and finish him off. Or maybe they wouldn't do that... probably not. They would do it somehow... some quiet way that no one would notice. Maybe, perhaps they'd slip something into his iv or not tap the syringe when they gave him a shot. He shook the thoughts from his head. He had to stop thinking that way. He had to have faith.

She must have noticed the concerned look on his face because her own face softened immediately as she took the seat next to his bed and began fiddling with the iv in his arm. "I bet you're worried about your friend."

He nodded again. Worried was an understatement.

"Is he... can you tell me how he's doing." He choked out the words. The first words he'd spoken since arriving in the hospital.

She held out his arm and inserted more saline to flush his iv before standing to start a new drip of medication. "He's here, in the ICU," she replied and watched his face as he waited eagerly for more information, "I'm sorry Mr. Littrell.."

"Call me Brian," he interrupted.

"I'm sorry Brian," she continued as she threw the needles away in the sharps container and removed her gloves with an emphatic 'snap' sound that seemed to echo through the room as time stood still for Brian, "...I can't give you anymore information until his family has been contacted."

Brian heaved a sigh of relief. That was better than what he'd been expecting. What he'd been expecting, since he'd seen Aj lying in a pool of blood that morning, and the words he couldn't get out of his mind... "I'm sorry... he's not going to make it."

And then his thoughts went to Aj's family... to his mother. God forbid she saw the news on tv. At least he would be able to call his wife and tell her he's okay. At least he would be able to hear her voice and she would be able to hear his and then she would know that the news... though about him in so many ways... that it was not him. Not he who'd been gravely injured. Not he who'd died.

But Aj's mom. This whole thing was just so unfair.

As the nurse turned to leave the room Brian found his voice again and spoke louder this time, "Ma'am," he called out and waited as she turned around to face him, "Is there a phone that I can use? I need to let my family know I'm okay. I need to talk to my wife... my little boy."

She nodded. "I'll get you one."

And she left the room and he leaned back in his bed and though he was still so very, very cold and now so tired, he felt warmer inside knowing that soon he would speak to his wife... and his wife could always make things better.

He was tired... so very, very tired. The exhaustion in fact, was nearly overwhelming now and as he sat there in that hotel room on the 15th floor and recounted the events of that morning... he remembered why.

"I was practically falling asleep sitting at the table." He murmured when she asked what made him decide to return to his room. "I'd finally felt tired enough to sleep."

And he felt tired enough to sleep right then too. His head felt like lead, his eyelids heavy... a combination of mental and physical and emotional exhaustion that were now all rolled into one and they were hitting him full force. He took a sip from the cup of water the kind female detective had handed him moments earlier. It moistened his lips, which were so dry and had started to bleed from the past few hours of being constantly chewed on -- because he always chewed on his lips when he was scared or nervous. He glanced back up towards the woman, "Amy Keenerson" -- the name on her badge read -- and their eyes met. She'd seemed so tough and rigid when she'd entered the room... the picture of professionalism. And she'd met the stereotype of what he'd always imagined from a female detective. She was pretty and he'd noticed that right away... but she had an air of seriousness about her that he knew could only come from her line of work. As the hour had gone on he'd noticed a change. Her demeanor shifted. Her voice softened, her eyes showed emotions (even though she tried to hide them)... she seemed more human to him. Less like a professional and more like an individual. It wasn't a bad thing either. He knew she'd seen the same things he had and he might have been disturbed if he'd thought a person could see something like that and not feel anything at all. Especially when he had so many feelings running through his mind he thought his head might explode.

She'd walked into the room nearly an hour before and taken a seat across from him. Howie had left to go to a separate room with the male officer and once again he'd found himself alone. Far away from the only people he felt he could trust in this world. The woman had asked him to tell his story... exactly as he'd remembered it... and he'd spent the last hour recounting the events.

He'd told her about laying in bed all night after the argument with his mother on the phone and then about deciding at around 7:00 in the morning that he would go down to the coffee shop on the ground floor for some coffee. He had thought that maybe if he tried doing something other than laying in bed and thinking, he would be able to forget the horrible things she'd said to him. He told her about riding down in the elevator alone and stepping out into the empty lobby alone and walking to the coffee shop and sitting down at the table... alone. His whole life that morning had seemed filled with lonliness. And then the waitress had asked him his order and she'd stopped to chat for a few minutes and they'd talked and laughed and he'd been thankful to her for filling the lonely void if even for a short while. And then she'd brought his coffee -- black -- and he wasn't sure why he'd ordered coffee because coffee wasn't something he even liked... but he had and he sat at that table alone while a few other people (probably businessmen and women) milled about the shop, ordering their drinks to go and rushing off to whatever big meeting seemed to await them. And he'd found himself sitting there, drinking his coffee and he was tired... so tired... and he'd nearly fallen asleep at the table and because of this he'd finally gotten up and headed back in the direction of his hotel room in the hopes that he could finally sleep.

"And where did you go next?" She asked, her voice soft.

He looked at her and then down at his hands and then back up at her again. This was where it all began. This was where things turned from lonliness to madness... from an early morning cup of coffee just to take his mind off his problems... into a nightmare.

"I walked back into the lobby and rode the elevator back up to our floor." He said as he rubbed the hem of his shirt between his fingers.

"Did you see anyone... pass anyone on your way? In the lobby? The elevator?"

He looked at her then, just now thinking of the people he'd passed. The woman in the doorway of the coffee shop with the red purse and the sweet smile. He'd bumped into her causing her to drop her purse on the floor and he'd apologized as she reached to pick it up. She'd smiled at him assuringly and said it was no problem. The man at the front desk who was chewing on his ink pen... he hated when people chewed on their ink pens, but the man had nodded and said, "Good morning" and Nick had nodded back and replied the same in response. The little boy in the overalls who was trying hard to get away from his mother's grip. He'd kept begging for a doughnut as she'd hurried him across the lobby in a rush to get to wherever they were headed in such a hurry. And the man getting off the elevator. The man with the red baseball cap and the tan jacket and the scruffy beard. He'd bumped rudely into Nick as he hurried off the elevator but he'd just hurried around him and Nick had watched him leave the building as the doors closed together and he hadn't thought anything else about any of them.

He watched as detective Keenerson hurridly took down notes on a small pad of paper. Notes that may or may not be the key to finding this killer. And he wondered how many people he might have missed... was there someone there he hadn't noticed? A man all dressed in black with a gun hidden in his breast pocket and an evil sneer on his face perhaps. Or a clue somewhere he hadn't seen? He had to wonder. And if he'd only left the coffee shop a few minutes earlier... or if he hadn't gone at all. But then again, maybe if he'd done anything different he'd be dead... he didn't want to think about that.

"And when did you realize that something was wrong?"

"The moment the elevator doors opened and I heard them screaming?"

"Who was screaming?"

"Everyone was screaming."

But mostly he'd heard his brothers. Brian's scream was the first he'd noticed and then Howie's... they'd been together for nearly 15 years now. He would know those voices anywhere. He could hear them a dark room... in a sea of thousands... and he could pick them out. He'd heard Brian's screams and his heart had stopped because never before in his entire life had he heard one of his friends scream like that. They screamed a lot... sometimes like girls, and especially Brian when they pulled pranks on one another, but this was totally different, and totally terrifying.

"And where did you go?"

"I ran towards the room where I heard the screams. Brian and Aj's room." He wiped a tear from his eye. It had been a minute since he'd stopped crying and he guessed his body figured that had been long enough.

"What did you see when you arrived there."

"I couldn't see much. There were so many people crowded around and everyone was screaming for help and someone kept saying to call 911 and that's when I heard her scream... and that's when I ran to the other room."

And this was the part that he most feared remembering.

"Who is 'she'?"

"Cynthia Claron. Jim Claron's wife."

"And what did you do when you reached Cynthia?"

The tears were flowing faster now and he was doing his best to still the sobs that were building within him. This had been the worst part of the entire nightmare. This had been the moment his world and everything he'd ever believed in... that despite anything bad a person could do, that people were good... this was when it all came crashing down.

"I opened the door of their apartment." He took a breath. He knew what the next question would be... he knew it in his heart and in his gut and he knew he'd never be able to answer... not without losing it all again.

"And what did you see."

What did he see?

He'd seen his loss of faith in humanity. He'd seen it in the eyes of a dead man, lying on the floor in a mass of blood and guts and surrounded by evil. He'd seen things he'd never wished or dreamed or even imagined he'd see in his entire lifetime and things he could go infinite more lifetimes without ever seeing again.

"I saw Jim Claron dead on the floor."

And that was all he could say before his stomach protested even the thought of saying more and he had to excuse himself, leaving the room quickly to vomit the thoughts away.

I watched as the young blonde stood and bolted for the door across the room, pretty certain he'd not even had time to turn on the light before his knees hit the floor. I listened, or rather tried my best not to listen, as the sounds of his wretching filled the hotel room. I often had to stop and remind myself during an investigation that victims were just that... victims. That most of them, before being thrust into whatever heinous situation they were facing... and this one was particularly heinous... had never seen the kinds of things we were presented with on a daily basis, and quite frankly, the scene in the room 1510 had been enough to turn even my, way more experienced stomach.

I'd gained a lot of insight in the past hour. I'd learned that the young man had not had the best childhood, that he'd had a disturbing talk with his mother the night before and that he'd suffered from insomnia. I had to take all of this information down, knowing that it would play into an investigation... with him as the suspect. Regardless of what the chief had said, every single person present in that building at the time of the murder, with the exception of the dead man... was a suspect. I knew that I would be leaving this room in a few more minutes, because I likely had all of the information I needed from him, and I would have to go down to the coffee shop and speak with the waitress to confirm his alibi. And then I would have to follow up on the individuals he spoke of... the woman with the red purse, the man at the front desk, the mother and son, the man on the elevator... because every single one of them could also be a suspect. I now knew that these individuals were present in the hotel and more importantly, moving around the hotel, at the time of the murders. I also knew from my earlier research that there were 806 rooms and 86 suites at the New York Palace Hotel and that left the potential for 1000's of possible suspects.

I winced as the sounds of more wretching filled the air. I felt horrible for him. I could only imagine... in fact I could not imagine going through the things these four young men had experienced that morning. I'd had to sit in the room with that body for nearly 45 minutes and then even longer after the body had been removed. I'd seen with my own eyes the horrors this individual... whoever it was... had done and these things disturbed me. I found myself hoping this was an inside job. Found myself praying that it was someone they knew, someone on their crew or at the very least, that it was someone targeting only them. And what a horrible thing to say, but when you've done what I've done for as long as I've done it and when you've worked on the cases you know are committed by a serial killer you cannot catch, you know what I mean when I say I hoped it was either an inside job or an targeted homicide.

The good news was I'd collected dozens of fingerprints, from both rooms. The bad news... it looked as if the fingerprints were those of the individuals who'd run to the rooms after the attacks. I'd believed in my heart that those prints would hold the key to the murderer... and maybe they still did. But now I wasn't so sure.

What I did know; With each passing second, minute, and hour our suspect had the potential of moving farther and farther away. Of widening the gap between being found and escaping for good. He or she also had the potential of killing again. I also new the statistics -- that out of the nearly 1700 homocides reported each year in New York City, 150 - 200 of those cases went unsolved, added to the nearly 10,000 cold cases kept on file. I didn't want this to be one of those.

I watched as he entered the room again, slowly, weakly. He walked over to the couch and sat back down, his face pale, sweat beads running down his forehead, his eyes bloodshot. I felt sorry for him. I tried not to feel anything... but it's always been hard for me not to be human.

"I think we're done," I said as he wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and sighed, "Unless there's anything else you think I need to know."

He shook his head. "What do I do now?"

"Wait here and I'll come and let you know when you can go see your friends."

It felt awful not being able to say 'go now'... 'find them', but I couldn't. Not now. I had a job that still had to be done. He looked exhausted. I stood from my seat and he stood from the couch and we walked to the door together. He held it open for me and I looked back at him once more.

"You can try to sleep if you think you can," I said... though I didn't really know why.

He gave me a confused sort of glance and I sighed, "You mentioned you were tired... that's why you came back up to your room... you were so tired you were practically falling asleep at the table downstairs."

He looked at me again and shook his head slightly, "You remembered."

I nodded, "That's my job."

My job.

'I remember the tiny details,' I thought to myself as he shut the door and I walked away -- the phone call with his mother, insomnia, coffee. The woman with the purse, the man at the desk with an affinity for chewing his pen, the mother and son in his overalls and the man on the elevator with the red hat and the tan jacket. I remember the way he was so tired he had to go back to his room. I remember he'd heard his friends screams but he couldn't see them and then he'd heard her screams and he'd ran to the room and he'd opened the door... and he'd vomited.

I remember the scene in that room. The man lying on the floor. He was naked, his body was carved with intricate details... perverted messages. The blood, the guts... the gruesomeness of it all.

And maybe that's why I was good at what I did... I was cursed with the ability to remember it all.

I stepped from the doorway out into the hall and stood there for a few minutes, staring down at the floor and allowing all of the past hour or so's thoughts to settle deep into my head... filing the evidence orderly into my categorical brain for safekeeping. When I finally glanced up I noticed Bosco standing down the hall from me, leaning against the wall beside the door to another room with his hands in his pockets, his eyes closed tight and his face turned towards the ceiling. I recognized this stance and the look on his face as Bosco's "deep in thought" look and I had to assume he was filing his information in an orderly fashion just as I had been moments before.

"How'd it go?" I asked, choosing a spot on the opposite wall and allowing my body to sink slowly to the floor until I was seated there across from him. I pulled my knees up towards my chest and rested my chin on them. I felt really unprofessional in that exact moment... but after all I'd seen and heard that morning, I was so far past giving a damn.

"It went." He responded, his eyes falling to meet mine as he also sunk to the floor, sticking his legs straight out in front of him and fumbling with the badge he held in his fingers. The badge that said "Detective Maurice Boscorelli -- NYPD Crime Scene Unit." I knew how hard he'd worked to get to this position... to sit here in front of me right now. If only he knew how close he'd come to blowing it that morning with his tirade towards the chief.

It had taken me a while to calm the chief down after that little episode in the hallway. He was totally prepared to can my partner right then and there. Thankfully I'd talked him into letting it go. Now we were sitting here together in this hallway, having both spent the past few hours doing the same things in different rooms with different people. It was clear now, sitting across from him, watching the look on his face and the exhausted position of his body, that regardless of the differences we had faced that morning, we'd both seen enough to last a long, long time.

Bosco sighed, dropping his badge to his lap and rubbing his eyes vigorously with the palms of his hands. He'd spent the last hour sitting alone in a room with a Backstreet Boy. A Backstreet Boy murder suspect. Who would have ever thought he'd do something like that? He'd asked questions to the young man -- although 'young'may not be a good word to use because Howie and Bosco were nearly the same age -- but anyway, the interview hadn't gone all that well. Mr. Dorough had spent nearly the entire time staring at the floor void of all emotion. This wasn't unusual. In fact, in all his years of working homocide cases, this was pretty typical. He answered Bosco's questions with simple "yes" and "no's" or phrases no longer than a few words. He didn't seem to have anything to hide.

"He said he was in bed when the screaming started. Said he jumped up and ran to the hall and over to his friend's room. Said he opened the door and saw him laying there and Brian screaming beside him. He tried to stop the bleeding... there was a lot... a whole lot. And he'd yelled for someone to call 911 and he'd waited until the ambulance arrived."

I listened to Bosco recount the details of Mr. Dorough's story and that's when I realized it... I realized what I'd found odd about the young man I had interviewed. Howie's details, Bosco's details, they were short and to the point, they were minimal at best and left a lot to be desired. Bed, the hall, his friends room. His friend lying there, Brian screaming, lots of bleeding. Call 911. These were the types of details we usually received at every case we worked and they so often led us absolutely no where.

I'd listened to Mr. Carter tell his story and something had struck me almost immediately. I'd found him a bit odd... a little eager... but only in those first few moments. He was quick to give an alibi, quick to set up his side of the story and so many times I would have said, "that's our best suspect right there." The guilty always seemed aimed and ready with stories and alibis, witnesses and reasons they could not be guilty... except that they were. As I'd continued to talk to Nick I'd started doubting myself. It's wasn't an eagerness to tell... it was a need to give the details... to share his story... to take the burdens and deposit them elsewhere.

Nick was like me.

I would walk into a scene and see the shape of the doorknob, the color of the carpet, whether or not the window blinds were shut or drawn. I would notice the tiny things like scars on a victims body, the color of hair, the way their lips were drawn in a frown or smile and the exact shape of every wound. I'd remember these things for days... sometimes weeks or months until eventually a new case came along and the images faded into the next set of graphic, unforgettable memories. I realized Nick was like me. He hadn't just seen a woman in the coffee shop or, a man at the desk, a mother with her son or a man on an elevator... he'd seen the purse, noticed the pen, the little boy was wearing overalls, the man on the elevator had a tan jacket and red cap.

He seemed to have the same sort of photographic memory... a memory that refused to let you forget the tiniest details.

And this... this could be a blessing or a curse.

Nick laid on his back on the comfortable posh hotel bed, his head resting wearily on the soft pillow, and he stared up towards the ceiling above his head. Any other day he would have given his right arm to still be laying in bed at 3:00 in the afternoon, listening to the radio, this comfortable... to be this alone in a world where he often felt constantly surrounded by friends and fans. Today though, it seemed like such a waste. An incredible waste of life and time and he felt like he should at the very least, not be laying in this bed doing nothing at all while two of his friends were suffering in the hospital and a murderer was somewhere running lose.

He'd tried to sleep, tried to at least get a small bit of rest, but his attempts at sleep and rest had been futile. His thoughts continued to race. Images of the dead man replayed constantly in his mind. Everytime he closed his eyes the blood and guts and gore awaited him. What had he missed? What had he remembered? What had he seen that morning that could be a clue to the mystery of this ordeal?

Nick had often considered himself an overanalyzer and for the most part anyone you asked who was close to him would agree. Trivial things stuck with him, small fights festered, words hurt, old wounds never healed and images and memories of things said and done could never be erased. The other guys had often told him to relax... to just 'let it go'... if only they realized how extremely difficult that was for him to do. He'd often thought the way he was had come from his childhood. He'd remembered every bad day, every fight. He'd remembered each harsh word said and the exact tone of voice with which they'd been thrown his way. He'd remembered the way his mother's hair fell in her eyes and the yellow shirt she was wearing and the way her eyebrows turned inward in anger the very first time she slapped him across the face... and he was only 15 then. He remembered the exact shape of the wound on his knee -- it looked just like a star to him -- the night his father shoved him down outside their house after he'd had a little too much to drink. He also remembered the smell of the drink on his breath -- tequila -- and the look of rage in his eyes and the fact that his father himself had a slight scratch above his left eye that Nick never bothered inquiring about.

He remembered all of these things and now there were so many more horrible images to add to his stock supply of agony. The man on the floor... the elaborate wounds. The people he'd met in the lobby that morning, the colors, the smiles, the things they held, the clothing. These were the things he would always remember. He'd told the detective, he'd let it all go... but now he laid here in this hotel room, on the comfortable bed and the thoughts still plagued his mind. He'd thought that letting go would help... it hadn't changed a thing.

Now all he wanted to do was go find his friends.

Howie laid on the couch across the room from Nick, watching silently as the young man stared up at the ceiling, humming quietly along with the Counting Crows on the bedside radio. Howie had remained by himself in the other hotel room for a while after his interview but the lonliness and the eerieness of it all had started to get to him. He'd gotten used to being with his brothers over the years and had to admit, he enjoyed the companionship. He'd honestly thought when he'd joined Nick the two of them would talk about the morning, the things they'd seen, what they'd experienced... but they hadn't done that at all.

He'd walked into the room a while ago and he'd taken a seat on the couch next to Nick and he'd watched as the young man contined to stare out the window and chew on his fingernails.

"You okay?" He'd asked, because really he had no idea what else to say.

Nick only shook his head. Of course not... he wasn't okay so why should he expect Nick to be?

"You want to talk about things?"

Nick shook his head again. Clearly he didn't and this was completely understandable. Howie had no idea what went on in the other hotel room. He'd stayed by Brian and Aj's sides as the mass of people had run in and out of the various rooms. He'd been too busy trying to stop the oozing of his best friend's blood to get up and go check out what was happening. He'd heard things though... this morning and in the hours following. How ungodly horrible the site in that room had been. How awful the murder, how brutal, and he knew that Nick had seen it firsthand. He couldn't imagine the pain the young man was going through.

"I just want to get out of this damn hotel," he'd been startled when Nick had spoken, jerking him away from his own thoughts. He'd nodded in agreement and reached out a tentative hand. "I know... they have to let us go soon."

He wanted to believe that was the truth, but he wasn't so sure. He'd seen the guards standing outside our doors... the police tape plastered throughout the hallways, the insane number of officers milling about the halls. He couldn't imagine they'd be letting the two of them go any time soon. Especially with the murderer still on the loose.

That was when Nick had stood and walked over to the bed. He'd collapsed in a heap there, not even bothering to turn down the covers. He laid there and stared up at the ceiling, flipping on the radio beside the bed. Music had always been Nick's escape from the world... Howie was thankful for that this time. He laid back on the couch myself and tried to relax.

He was staring up at the ceiling, lost in his own thoughts when they finally walked through the door.

"You are both free to go now," the female detective spoke with a warm smile, "I'm sorry we had to keep you so long... please understand this was standard procedure in a case like yours."

He nodded, not knowing any other appropriate response. This didn't seem a good time for 'thank yous.'

"This if officer Sullivan," the young detective who'd interviewed him earlier interupted, ushering another officer into the room, "he will escort you both to the hospital to see your friends. Please be warned we do not consider either of you out of danger at this point."

Nick had stood by then and joined them there in the doorway. He was nodding towards the detective, obviously eager for everyone to shut-up so they could leave.

The detectives continued with a few more warnings and some updates that amounted to nothing useful and which both Howie and Nick were ignoring as they gathered their belongings and followed officer Sullivan out the door of the hotel room and down the elevator 15 floors, through the lobby and out to the waiting cruiser.

The two of them had one thing on their minds...

Their brothers.

I glanced over towards where Bosco sat, his forehead pressed against the passenger seat window as I steered the car in the direction of the station. It had been a long day and I was more than ready to fill out my paperwork and head home for a quiet evening with my family. I silently wondered what Bosco was thinking about, sitting there beside me, ever the talkative one after a case it seemed unusual for him to be so placid... so depressed. It worried me.

If I could have been inside his mind that late afternoon, reading his thoughts, walking through his memories with him... maybe I would have known that my worry was warranted.

His memories kept returning to those days just following the September 11th attacks on New York City and the conversation he'd had with his then partner, Faith Yokas. He'd remembered for the first time in his entire career as a police officer he'd felt absolutely helpless and hopeless and useless. He'd wondered if his job meant anything at all to anyone at all and even though he could see it did... he could see it in the pictures and the letters and the articles and the media that surrounded America's most tragic day and the love and respect sent to the police officers and firefighters who'd been there... but he'd still doubted himself. It was the first time he'd ever thought about quitting his job.

He'd remembered his response to Faith when she asked if he was really going to quit... "So are you?"... and his response, "And let that skinny little bearded bastard think he beat me? Hell no! Give me a parachute and a pistol and drop me in there. I'll shoot him in the head myself."

And at the time he'd meant every word... because he knew that quitting his job over the things he'd seen... the things he'd witnessed... that would be letting them win. And he would never ever in a million years admit that kind of defeat. So he'd kept his job and he'd fought even harder to keep the bad guys off the streets. He'd tried harder, played harder, worked harder. And it all seemed to have paid off. And then there was that fateful day in the hospital... and he'd survived and he'd fought hard again and he'd busted his ass to come back.

And that conversation... after he'd lied to everyone about his eyesight, lied because he knew in his heart that he couldn't just move to a desk job... that his life was out on the streets fighting crime the old fashioned way... that conversation had nearly made him give it all up again. It really had been an accidental shooting. He really had just missed that shot. But because of the lies he'd told and the grave he'd dug for himself, he couldn't make them believe. He'd nearly lost it all over that one shot.

Those were the only two times he'd debated leaving his job in all those years... just those two times. Now he found himself thinking of it constantly. How many more murders could he stand to see. How many more helpless victims could he walk into a room and interview knowing their lives had just been destroyed. How many more times could he pretend that he enjoyed the work he did. He didn't enjoy this anymore. He had a wife now and a newborn daughter. He had a family and a home and everytime he saw a dead person lying on the floor of a dark alley, or a city street, or a fancy hotel... he imagined it was him. He imagined his wife and daughter waking up everyday and him not being there. He didn't want to imagine these things anymore.

I pulled into the station just as the guys from 5-5 David were pulling in. Great. As if spending the whole day in the same building with him hadn't been painful enough... now we were all going to be filling out paperwork together.

"Those were the good ole days," I heard Bosco whisper from the seat beside me.

"What's that Bosc?" I asked turning towards him and noting the pained expression that crossed his face.

"Oh...," it was as if he'd just realized he'd said it out loud... "nothing, I just miss the days of 5-5 David and the crew."

I nodded.

He missed the days of working on the streets, chasing down bad guys and locking them up. Maybe this whole detective thing wasn't meant for him. He'd suddenly felt the need to save lives... not solve the mysteries of the already dead.

If only I'd known his thoughts that afternoon... maybe then I could have told him I was feeling the same way.

Brian lay in his hospital bed, his eyes shut, his wounds aching. They'd finally moved him to a room of his own... a room with a view and a tv and a telephone where he'd spent hours on the phone letting his family know that he was okay. The first person he'd called had been his wife. The conversation had been uncomfortable at best, and heartbreaking. He'd never realized the kind of pain a person could go through stuck in the 'not knowing'...

"Hello," She'd said when she'd finally answered the phone after the fourth or fifth ring.

"Leigh?" His voice was shaky, tears trickling down his cheeks. His heart was pounding in his chest, his lungs fighting to breathe in the air at a steady pace. He had no idea why he was panicking, but he was.

"Oh my God! Brian?? Oh my God! Is it really you? Please God tell me it's you and that you're okay!" He could hear the worry in her voice, the fear, the exhaustion and the frustration. He knew she'd seen the news and heard the stories. What had they been saying? What horrible things she been hearing?

"It's me baby," he whispered as the tears fell faster, "... I'm okay."

He listened as she broke down on the other end of the phone. Her sobs filling his ear through the receiver... his own sobs following right behind.

"I was so worried Bri. They said on the news... they... I was so worried." She couldn't get the words out. What had they said?

"What'd they say hon?" He asked with a sigh, "what kind of bullshit are the telling everyone?"

"Brian," she responded with a concerned voice, "you don't need to worry about it... all that matters is you're okay."

He shook his head, "No Leigh... what are they saying?"

And in the following minutes the conversation turned from one of happiness and relief to one of anger and frustration. The news stories were saying that a homocide had occured at the hotel of the Backstreet Boys and that what was known so far was that the boys were involved. The media believed that one of the boys was dead and that Brian was critically injured. Reports weren't being released as to who the deceased may be, but it was also believed that the other guys were being regarded as suspects.

How dare they? They'd obviously missed the first ambulance taking Aj to the hospital and they'd seen Brian taken out and the body loaded into the coroner's van at approximately the same time. The media was making broad assumptions that had no basis whatsoever in reality. It pissed Brian off. He'd informed Leighanne what had really happened and she was in the process of booking the next flight to New York. He'd called his mom and dad in Kentucky and once again tearfully let them know that he was okay and then thankfully the nurse had given him a sedative and some pain pills to help him rest for a little while.

"Rest and try to stop thinking about things," she'd said as she hooked the new bag of medication to his IV pole.

Like that was going to happen.

Brian opened his eyes when he heard the door to his room click open. He figured it would be another doctor or nurse to give him the once over, check his temperature and inflict more pain. He was shocked to look up and find Howie and Nick standing in his doorway. Shocked and elated. Thank God.

He took in the faces of two of his best friends in the world and couldn't help but wonder what all they had been through. It had only been hours since everything had happened.. but it felt more like days. Howie looked tired, but focused and his usually pristine hair was a complete mess. He looked older than he had the day before... he looked in dire need of a bed to lay his head on. Nick looked tired too and lost. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks tear stained. Brian knew from experience that Nick had always been the emotional one in the group... this had to be breaking his heart. He couldn't help but notice that the usually smiling faces of both men now showed little emotion. They were more like blank stares... stares of exhaustion and he knew that regardless of showing no emotion... they showed it all.

He tried to speak but the words would not come. He laid there in his bed and stared at the two of them as the tears stung his eyes and rolled endlessly down his cheeks. As if noticing this the two of them came quickly to either side of the bed and sat down there, taking his hands in their own. They sat there for a long time in the type of silence that speaks volumes louder than any words could ever say. No one spoke. No one wanted to be the first to speak. Everyone was afraid of breaking the damn held up by the eerie calm.

It was Brian who finally took the plunge, "Have you called your families yet?" He asked as the two guys looked towards him.

They both nodded in response but didn't speak. Howie had spent the entire 30 minute ride to the hospital on the phone with his wife and sister. He'd talked, he'd cried, he'd told them both how much he loved them. Leigh was the furthest away from this all, she was way out in California and they all knew it would take her a while to get there. Howie had told her not to rush and she had told him she was just thankful that he was okay. Nick had turned his phone off after calling the only person he really cared to talk to. His brother Aaron. He'd spoken to him briefly, short sentences, "I'm okay." "I love you." And that was that. He'd changed his voicemail to let anyone else who dared call know that he was okay and he'd clicked the off button. He wanted to be alone in this world right now... just him and his thoughts and his friends. No one would understand what they'd been through but them and he didn't care to share it with the world.

"They're going to call a press conference shortly," Howie finally murmured after the silence had continued too long. "They're going to set the facts straight... let everyone know who's okay and who died... let everyone know there's a killer on the loose." He frowned when he said it and turned towards the door, thankful for a brief moment that there were guards surrounding their room.

"Anyone heard anything about Aj?" Brain asked as he shifted uneasily in his bed.

Howie and Nick shook their heads. "They brought us here first," Nick replied, "said we couldn't see Aj right now... said his mom was on her way."

Brian sighed. At least they'd gotten through to his mom. He'd tried several times throughout the day to do it himself. He thought that maybe hearing the news from someone she knew would be better than hearing it from some random hospital employee or police officer, but her phone had stayed busy.

They flipped on the television to watch the latest news as the silence settled once more. The press conference was over now... the new headlines; "Backstreet Boys Tragedy: Tour Manager Dead, Brian Littrell and Aj McLean hospitalized for unknown injuries, Suspect still at large." There were scenes of the coroner's van that made Nick turn away in agony. Scene's of Brian being wheeled out on a stretcher that he couldn't watch and the latest scenes were of Nick and Howie being taken away in the police car to visit with their friends... "Backstreet's Howie and Nick escorted to the hospital -- The two men are no longer considered suspects."

What sickened Nick to his very core was that they ever were.

I sat at the oversized table in one of the many humid, sticky conference rooms located within the main headquarters of the NYPD. My head swam with information, overflowing as I worked diligently to sort it all out on the stack of paperwork in front of me. The table had been in constant rotation with pizza boxes and coke cans, police officers and other detectives who we'd worked side-by-side with on the case that morning. We'd all come back for a rendevous of sorts... a sit-in of facts and information... of evidence and shared knowledge. The ultimate goal -- to figure out who done it, to find them and then to arrest them and put them behind bars for a long, long, long time. My hope -- to end this case quickly, for myself, my partner, and everyone else involved.

I hummed our song to myself as I went over the information for about the 10th time in the several hours we'd been there. I hadn't even realized it was our song when I'd started humming... it just came to me. At some point most of the officers had left, having shared what little information they knew. They were ready to head home to their lives and their families... others were headed back to the streets, all of them were ready to forget about this case. I was working on the write-up for my 8th and final interview. I'd interviewed not only Mr. Carter that morning, but also the waitress in the coffee shop -- Heather Lipsten was her name and Nick had been right, she had a great personality, I'd interviewed the pen chewing employee at the front desk -- Charles Edwin -- and I'd interviewed 5 of the individuals who'd ended up in the rooms after all was said and done. I never found the woman with the red purse or the mother with her little boy. I never found the man in the tan jacket with the baseball cap.

I glanced up momentarily from my mound of paper work to watch as Boscorelli and Faith Yokas chatted across the table. His mood hadn't improved since we'd arrived and if I didn't know any better I'd have thought Yokas was chewing his ear about whether or not he was okay. That made me feel better. If ever there was a time I couldn't get through to Maurice Boscorelli... I could always count on Faith. I watched them for a few moments before averting my eyes to the other side of the table where Sullivan, Davis and Finney were now playing cards. Wow. I had to give it to those guys... they could make the best of any bad situation. They'd offered for all of us to play, but I just wanted to finish up and get home to my husband and children.

After a few minutes of watching them play, I finally forced myself to focus on my work again. I didn't have too much left to do, but my mind was a jumble, my eyes were blurred and my fingers were cramped. All I wanted to do was lay my head down on the table and hope the information would somehow seep out my ears and write itself. Slowly the people around me disappeared. First it was Sullivan and his partner who were supposed to be going back on call, then Yokas and Finney left to go home. At some point Boscorelli left the room... but I wasn't too sure when that happened because I'd gotten lost in my work and in my own thoughts about the day.

When I looked up and noticed Davis sitting across from me staring, I sighed. I did not need to deal with all of this today. Actually I would have been happy never having to think about it or deal with it again. That would have made my life much easier.

"Almost done?" He asked as he stood and walked over to the coffee pot. I couldn't imagine he still had paperwork to do... so why was he still here?

"Almost," I responded with as little enthusiasm as I felt, looking down and returning to my work.

"You thirsty?" He asked as he brought a cup of coffee over and set it down in front of me before he started massaging my shoulders.

I moaned out loud. This was not happening. This was just not happening. Not now, not tonight... not happening.

"Ty," I whined, laying my head down on the table. I felt him sit down in the chair beside me but I refused to look up at him.

"Amy..." He was waiting. I had to say something. I'd practiced this conversation a million times in my mind, but it wasn't coming easily. Why was I hesitating?

"We can't do this anymore." I finally blurted it out. It felt good to say it, to get it off my chest. I looked up briefly and was not surprised to see the look of shock and confusion on his face.

"Do what?... Why not?" He asked... as if he really needed to know. As if he really needed to hear the answer from me.

I looked at him completely now. Eyes meeting eyes, hand reaching out for hand. "You know what... and you know why."

He frowned and stood up walking towards the door. Leaving. He was good at leaving.

"I thought I was pregnant Ty." I don't know why I said it... I wasn't... it was none of his business anyway... not now that I knew we had nothing to worry about.

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned towards me. He shook his head, "What?"

"Yeah... I took a test this morning... it was negative." He walked towards me again and took me in his arms. I couldn't help but fall into him... I was crying. I hated feeling this way... hated feeling like this when I knew I shouldn't. It was wrong. I pushed him away... it was hard to believe there was a time when I would have been more than thrilled to sharing this bit of information with him.

"No!" I said as he tried to pull me back and I pushed him farther... "We can't do this anymore... I love Jimmy... I love my family. I can't do this anymore."

"But I love you." Why? Why the hell did he have to say that? He couldn't possibly LOVE me.

I stood quickly, throwing the papers into my briefcase and flying out the conference room door as the tears fell steadily down my face. Damn him. The tears were blurring my vision and I just wanted to get the hell out of that building and far away from everything I couldn't face right now but something stopped me. Something tall and soft... I ran smack into him.

"Keener?" I looked up into the tired eyes of Maurice Boscorelli and he looked down at me with deep concern, "Are you okay."

I nodded, not knowing what to say... "I'm okay." I looked towards the conference room and his eyes followed mine. Davis was sitting in a chair at the table with his back to us.

"What'd he do?" Bosco asked, concern growing in his voice by the second.

"Nothing," I said trying my best to hide my emotions by plastering a smile on my face... a smile, the best I knew how... "He didn't do anything."

I gave Bosco a quick hug and let him know I'd see him the next day and then I ran out the building and into the darkened parking lot, the smile still etched on my face. I climbed into my car and aimed it in the direction of the only peaceful place I could think of. I needed to go... to get away from it all.

I was going to need to do a lot of smiling to feel better about all of this.

Have you ever felt totally lost in the world? It's late and it's dark and you don't know where you are or why you're there and there's no way for you to stop and ask directions... "How do I get back to the place I know." Nope... there's none of that.

That's how Aj felt. He was lost in the darkness with no where to go and no way of knowing which way to turn. He could hear voices, conversations going on around him, but he couldn't speak out to ask for help. He couldn't move... not one muscle in his body seemed willing to work with him... not a finger to point out and say 'Hey, I'm here,' not a hand to reach out for whoever was waiting, not even his head to nod. Nothing worked.

"How's our patient?" He heard a soft feminine voice say as a door clicked open and shut in the distance. He wondered if they were talking about him... and if they were... he wished he could tell them he wasn't doing too great.

"Mr. McLean is stable," another voice, this time a man's voice, spoke into the darkness. "He seems to be resting comfortably."

Now he knew they were talking about him. Why? What happened for him to be here? And he may appear to their eyes to be 'resting comfortably' but he certainly wasn't. He couldn't feel any pain... for that he was thankful, but he also couldn't feel anything at all, and that terrified him.

"Let's allow him to get some rest," he heard the female's voice again, "I'll check on him again in a bit." He trained his ears on the sounds of their footsteps towards what he could only assume was the door. He heard it open and close. Alone.

He listened intently for a few minutes, realizing his senses were working in overdrive. He may not be able to see anything, but he could certainly smell everything -- the scent of dried blood, that medicinal smell of a hospital room, and something else that invaded his nostrils which he couldn't put a finger on. He could hear the smallest of noises; the steady beep of the machines beside his bed, the whooshy breathing sound of the ventilator, people talking out in the hallway... the door squeak open and then close.

"Who's there." That's what he wanted to say... what he would have said if he could have spoken, but he couldn't speak, not for the tube in his throat and the fact that he was pretty sure this was all a dream anyway, and so no one answered.

He felt someone growing closer to him, heard the footsteps, listened as the chair beside his bed protested the weight of it's occupant. Maybe it was one of his friends come to visit him. Maybe they could sort this all out.

"Thought you were gonna get away from me didn't you?" A voice snarled in his ear. He felt his heart rate quicken. He could feel the person's warm breath in his ear, feel the droplets of spit when he talked, smell the scent of something rancid on his breath.

He fought hard to hold his breath, but of course on the ventilator this was an impossible feat. He felt the man's hand around his throat, heard him muttering words of nonsense in his ears and he mentally willed himself with every single ounce of his entire being, to wake up and fight whoever this was off.

As if in response to his own mind's power, his body returned to life. His eyes shot open and his arms reached out for the attacker, the sounds of the machines beeping wildly around him.

But it was too late... the room was empty.

Nurses and doctors came running in from all directions. They pled with him to calm down, begged him to stop fighting the tube in his throat... to lie back on the bed and try, 'just try to relax.' He was growing more aggitated and hostile with each passing moment. What the hell had just happened... what the hell?

Finally a group of them held him down to the bed, assuring him that relief would be coming soon and it was... in the form of a nice sedative that would return Aj to his thoughts of floating high about the clouds, far away from the pain and the agony... but back into the darkness.

I found myself sitting on a small patch of grass in the tiny cemetary a few blocks from my home. I often found myself there in that same spot after a particularly disturbing case... or any case for that matter. In fact, you could find me there on any given day, at any given moment. It was the most peaceful place in the world for me, even if the memories were my most painful, they were also my most treasured.

Sometimes I would find myself sitting there for no reason at all other than to sing to her. I would sing to her for hours and I would remember. Sitting there in the solice of that quite, peaceful place, I found that I could still remember everything about her.

I sang the song her father and I had sung to her nearly every single night from the day she was born, in the hospital, curled up in that sweet way babies always curl up and neatly fitting in the crook of my arm. And we continued to sing it for her until the very night she died, curled up comfortably on my chest, in the hospital, tiny and nearly as helpless as she'd been the day she was born. I'd found myself singing that song as she took her final breath of air and sailed off into the heavens.

I often found myself wondering who she would be now if she were still alive. She would have been almost 12 years old. She should have been in junior high. What would she have been like? Who would she have looked like? Would she have been a tomboy like I had been growing up? Would she have loved school as much as her father always had? Would she be as passionate about life as the two of us always were?

This night I wondered what I would be doing different. I certainly wouldn't be sitting here in front of this silent grave, singing to the wind. Would she have been playing with her friends and enjoying this beautiful summer evening, maybe having a slumber party or a campout in the backyard? Maybe the three of us, and possibly her brothers or sisters would all be out together, eating ice cream like we always did on Friday nights. Maybe she would be sitting on the front porch with her dad reading a good book when I arrived home from work and I would sink down with the two of them and we'd all settle peacefully into one another's arms... the way it had always been supposed to be.

Those were the thoughts that always crossed my mind and it pained me immensely to know I would never find out. I stared at the grave before me as I continued to sing her song...

I traced her name with my fingertips and thought of all the moments we'd shared together... the precious moments that made up the memories of her lifetime... the way our lives had changed since the day she died.

I wiped the tears from my eyes as I thought about the night she'd died and the months before. The pain she'd been through and the things she'd endured. Her beautiful sparkling eyes had all but lost their sparkle. Her golden brown skin had paled from the months of being stuck in the hospital. Her soft long brown curly hair had been replaced by a soft, silky bald head. But I'd loved those eyes and that skin and that head. And I would have given anything for more moments with her. Three years had not been long enough to get to know someone. Especially when I'd expected the rest of my life.

She'd died that night, looking beautiful and peaceful, in her own fashion. It was expected and unexpected and beautiful and painful and tragic... and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Her birth, her life, her death... I had been there for every major milestone in her life, every precious moment. I wouldn't have traded those memories for the world.

We'd tried our best to make our marriage last and to survive together after she'd died... but we'd failed. Maybe even miserably. Like so many couples before us and so many couples to follow, we'd failed to find a way to live through our sadness as a couple. The only things we'd had in common anymore were that we had both lost our daughter, and that it hurt like hell.

Aside from that, the differences were glaring.

I'd turned to my faith, and he was mad at God. He'd wanted to pack up her things and turn her room back into a guest room and I'd wanted to keep the memories around as long as possible even if I never once opened that door in the months following her funeral. He'd thought we should return to work to take our minds off the pain... I'd wanted to curl up in a bed and stay there forever and if I drowned in the pain, so be it. 'Who can even think about work,' I'd thought at the time... 'my daughter is dead.'

It wasn't until after our divorce was finalized and I'd sought therapy to overcome my grief, that I finally realized that the main reason for our downfall was the lack on both our parts to allow each other to grieve the way we needed to. And I hated myself when I realized it, because I should have known... we should have known. The two of us had years worth of experience dealing with death in our jobs in law enforcement and we'd always learned, in every single class we'd taken that death affects every individual differently. That every single human being reacts in their own way and that this is perfectly acceptable. We, of all people, should have known.

And now here I was... singing to my daughter's grave... the daughter I would never see again. The daughter I missed a million little ways and a thousand big ones every single day of my life. And I knew that tonight, after I left this spot, I would go home to my 'now' family and I would tuck my beautiful, wonderful kids into bed, and I would kiss them each goodnight and I would sing them that same song and I would love them just as much, and sometimes I was scared that I loved them more, but I didn't. This was just a totally different love. A love that only someone who's lost a child can feel.

And after I tucked them in I would walk down the hall to my room and I would lay in bed beside my husband and I would think of how much I loved him too. And I would realize that the way I loved him was also totally different.

I stared at the name etched on the grave next to mine. Tyrone Davis.

Ty.

The two lives I'd lived in the past 15 years felt more like two entirely different lifetimes. In one I'd lost my perfect daughter and the man I'd loved for years and years. In the other I had the perfect children and a man I loved now and planned on loving for years to come.

So why couldn't I let go of him?

It was because deep inside, I still really loved him. Somehow when things settled and our grief had subsided, after years of heartache and misery, there we were... back again... the same two people we'd always been even though we had both been changed forever. And yet, somehow there inside both of us was a love that had never changed... but it was too late.

And I was both relieved and saddened to realize this.

Nick glanced down at the sliver of needle poking uncomfortably from the gauze that covered it's insertion point in the crook of his left arm. He sighed deeply as his eyes trailed the tube that began at that needle, ran the length of his arm, which was taped stratigically in several places so it wouldn't be pulled out, and ended at the bag of fluids hanging loosely on the IV pole beside his hospital bed.

"Exhaustion, dehydration and possible shock."

Those were the words the doctor had used to diagnose him after he'd passed out cold nearly an hour before. He was sure it was more than simple exhaustion though. More than shock even.

He was sure this was all a part of the same huge nightmare he'd been living in all day. And he was just as sure that soon he'd be waking up and starting a new day where none of this had happened. Where his friends were all okay and his own body didn't ache for normalcy. This nightmare absolutely had to be ending soon... that much he knew.

He stared up at the ceiling in silence, doing his best to block out the constant visions that attempted to replay themselves over and over, again and again in his worn out mind. He'd tried with all his might to block out those memories, knowing in his heart what he needed to do -- that he needed to focus on the before and the after, not the then, but the now -- the fact that his friends were still alive, if barely, and that they were all together again, even if for the time being, "together again" meant having to be separated by cold sterile hospital rooms and the Intensive Care rules of a New York City hospital.

Try as he might to block out all of those horrible memories, all attempts were futile. His mind continually raced back to those horrible moments on the 15th floor of what had in the earliest moments of their stay, seemed like an incredibly safe and peaceful place to take refuge. His mind replayed the sounds of those screams -- the screams of his best friends as they held tightly to one of their own, bloodied and broken on the carpeted floor. Then to her screams... those high pitched, god-awful, agonizing shrill screeches that led him down the hallway to that room and to that body. Down the hallway to the horrendous, gutwrenching sight he'd seen when he'd opened that door.

His ability to remember the tiniest of details -- His blessing and his curse.

The image of what was once a body, laying splayed upon the sitting room floor. The tattoo that had at some point been etched on the arm of his good friend and manager... now only visible because the arm was detached from the body and laying at his feet. And then, then he saw the rest. A finger here, a toe over there... and he was pretty sure that thing he'd seen propped up on the center of the bed...

No. Just no.

He shuddered and shivered at the very thought, his stomach lurching violently as his body rebeled against the very idea... he couldn't think about any of this anymore.

He wondered once again if maybe he'd missed something somewhere. A clue? A person? Someone lurking in the shadows. A killer who had been waiting. A killer who might still be waiting... watching. He wondered about the waitress in the coffee shop at the hotel and the desk clerk chewing his pen. He wondered about the mother with her little boy who seemed to be in such a hurry to get her son out of the building that she couldn't even stop to fill his simple request. He wondered about the man on the elevator in the baseball cap who'd brushed past him so harshly he'd nearly felt the angry energy radiating from his body. What had he missed? Somewhere... there had to be something. Some clue that could solve this entire mystery. If only he'd gone back up to his room a little earlier. If only he'd never left at all. If only he hadn't gotten that call from his mother... If only, if only, if only.

If only could make all the difference.

If only could save a life.

If only... could kill you.

His blessing, and his curse.

He closed his eyes and shook his head as hard as he could, as if perhaps he could shake the thoughts and the images from his brain. It was no use though. He stared at the IV in his arm once more and traced the path of the tubing up towards the bag. The steady drip, drip, drip of the fluids as it flowed into his veins. He found himself counting -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.

Maybe if he just kept counting... maybe if the medicine just kept dripping, maybe then he could stop thinking about anything at all.

"Yeah right"... he thought. It would take all the medicine in the world to make someone like him stop thinking.

He stood there, in the doorway of the overly quiet ICU room -- we're talking the kind of quiet that was deafening -- and tried his best to fight the tears that were threatening to spill down his cheeks.

"You can go down and see your friend now," the soft spoken, gentle looking nurse had told him when she'd entered the cramped and crowded hospital meeting room where Howie had been taken to, once again be interviewed by the police, only a short few minutes before. And as relieved as he'd been by the idea that he'd finally be allowed to leave the confines of that cramped and stuffy little closet they called the "Private family waiting area", he'd been more terrified by the idea of seeing his friend for the first time since everything had happened that morning.

Now he stood in the doorway, hesitating, sick at his stomach and not wanting to go any further. If Aj looked this bad from as far away as the doorway... he could only imagine how bad it was going to be when he got up close. He could already see the bruises on his face and the dried blood beneath his nose. His leg was being held up in one of those hightech devices that hung from the ceiling and the rest of him was tucked neatly beneath at least a dozen white hospital issued blankets.

"You can go on in now," the nurse prodded from behind, giving him a gentle but steady shove in the back, urging him ahead as if perhaps she knew what he was thinking -- that if he didn't get this over with now, he would surely turn around and run like hell as far away from this place as his exhausted legs could manage to carry him.

"His mother stepped out to speak with the doctor's for a few minutes," she continued, as they headed towards the bed together. She pulled him by the hand towards the small chair beside Aj's bed -- possibly taking note of the paleness of his skin. Maybe she was just as worried as Howie himself that he would be the next to pass out and land in a hospital bed like Nick.

"Sit here and talk to him... just talk. He's in an induced coma so he won't respond to you... but I believe he can hear you if you talk to him." She continued on as if small talk might make things better but Howie was paying little attention now as his eyes widened at the sight of his best friend's pitiful figure. He was right. It was so much worse from this close up. His head was wrapped in a bandage, blood seeping out from beneath the corners of the wounds that weren't quite covered. His right ear was completely hidden beneath a thick patch of sterile guaze. His eyes were swollen shut and purple with the bruises the madman had inflicted. Howie didn't even want to think about the wounds on the rest of his body. He didn't want to think about the gaping hole he'd plunged his hands into earlier in the day... the one right in the middle of his brother's chest.

"Will you be okay for a few minutes?" The nurse asked after several tense moments had passed during which Howie shed silent tears over Aj's condition, sitting vigil by the side of his bed, holding the one hand that poked out from beneath the mass of blankets. The one part of his body that seemed to be uninjured. All he could was nod in response to the nurse -- Kate was her name and she'd been most helpful -- and so he nodded even though he truly didn't want to be left alone with this person he was sure could not be Aj.

He watched as she walked out of the room, fear rushing over him as he tried not to look at the figure upon the bed beside his chair. He continued to sit there though. To sit and hold Aj's hand.

Finally, after several more long and agonizing minutes of silence Howie felt the need to say something... he didn't know what, but definitely something to his friend. He leaned down and grasped his hand tighter, squeezing his fingers and feeling their warmth within his own hand. He rubbed his hand over Aj's for a few moments, trying his best to steel the emotions that were threatening to pour from his body and not knowing what to say, but knowing he needed to say it. Finally the words came to him.

"I love you man," he whispered, because it was the best thing he knew to say and because it was true. "Get better okay... you gotta get better."

As if in response to his words Howie started hearing the monitors around him beeping louder. He wondered if maybe Aj was starting to wake up.

Then he remembered what the nurse had said; "He's in an induced coma..." and his attention immediately shot towards the monitors around Aj's bed that were beeping more rapidly now... and louder. And then, once more as if on cue, doctors and nurses filed into the room and the fast beeping of the monitors turned into one steady "bbbbbeeeeeeppppp" and Howie's heart nearly stopped right along with it.

"He's flatlining!" A young doctor yelled as he reached for the curtain around Aj's bed and a nurse by his side began CPR, "Call a code!"

Those were the last words Howie heard before another nurse had grabbed him by the arm and was escorting him out the door into the hallway of the ICU.

Brian lay in his hospital bed, groggy and uncomfortable... in pain, but still overwhelmingly grateful to be alive. The more he thought about the day's events (and believe me, he tried hard not to think about them at all), the more he began to realize how incredibly lucky he was to be alive. All of the pain and all of the physical injuries -- the bruises and the broken ribs, the handprints around his neck and the throbbing in his head... those wounds would heal with time. Death, he knew, would have been the eternal alternative to his place in this world. And now, staring at the photo of his wife and son the nurse had been kind enough to retrieve from the wallet of his blue jean pants pocket and prop on his bedside table -- as deep as his belief in God had always been, and as spiritual a man as he still was, he refused to even allow himself to think about the alternatives. About what could have happened. Because, as he continously reminded himself, what could have happened was not what did happen.

His relief didn't stop his worry for Aj though. He'd been in that room... he'd felt the power of that man (if you could call him a man). He'd seen Aj's injuries with his very own eyes and in his heart he'd known -- from the moment his eyes had focused on the limp body of his brother in that hotel room -- that things were bad. Very bad. Physical wounds like Brian's were the kind that healed with time and rest. The wounds on Aj's body however... those were the kind of physical wounds that could leave a lasting impression. A damage so bad that it could scar a man for life... or worse.

Brian took his eyes off the photo of Leighanne and Baylee. He wondered what time it was. It felt like tomorrow... or maybe next week.

It felt like a lifetime had passed by since he'd been brought into the hospital that morning, even though in reality he knew it was still today. That the setting sun outside his window meant that night was falling and with night would come darkness and the thought of darkness on a day like today was almost more than he could bare.

It'd been well over an hour since Howie had left the room after the sweet nurse had told him he could finally go visit Aj in the ICU. That seemed like an awfully long time... especially when Brian knew the rules in the ICU far too well. 15 minutes with the patient. In and out and don't disturb. 15 minutes was a lot less time then 'well over an hour'.

Where was Howie?

How was Aj?

And why oh why was Nick still refusing to say anything at all?

He turned to the silent figure of his best friend, lying in the bed on the other side of the room, his back towards Brian, the blankets hiding all but the blonde tufts of hair that peeked out from beneath the covers. If it weren't for those tufts and his gentle snoring, Brian wouldn't have even been sure a human being inhabited the space on that bed at all.

Nick hadn't said a word since he'd passed out a few hours before. The nurses and doctors had rushed in quickly and settled him into the bed next to Brian's and he'd laid there in silence and stared at the ceiling and said absolutely nothing at all. Even when Brian tried to make small talk... even then he was met with the back of Nick's head as the young man rolled over onto his side and pretended to be too tired to carry on a conversation, or to answer the question "are you okay?"

Brian was worried about Nick... really worried. It was no secret that the youngest Backstreet Boy's life had been a mess of family and emotional problems. A mother and father who cared more about their young son's money than his well being, accusations of homosexuality and weight issues and then, then the whole Paris thing. The whole damn Paris thing.

Aj had always said that Nick lived his life with one foot in the asylum. Not that Aj had ever been one to talk, but they'd mostly agreed. The kid spent most of his time on the edge of sanity... but Brian would never have guessed it'd been a homicidal maniac who'd push him over.

Brian sighed as another pain shot through his neck and head. He knew the doctor's wanted to keep him unmedicated until the police arrived to interview him, but this was getting ridiculous. He wanted something for the pain and he wanted to sleep. He wanted to stop thinking about everything that had happened that day.

Suddenly, the silence that had settled over the room came to an abrupt halt as voices in the hallway -- loud voices -- echoed through the air...

He woke up in a room he didn't recognize. A room he was pretty sure he'd never seen before in his entire life. It was small... and cramped and he was sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair that was cold on his barely covered ass. In fact, he was pretty cold all over -- hospital gowns didn't go a long way in keeping you warm. He looked down at his arms and noticed the marks where the IV's had once been inserted. He pulled the tiny hospital gown away from his chest and peered down to find the bandages still covering the wounds so grotesque he dared not think about them.

He wondered silently where he was and how he'd gotten there. He remembered only moments of what had happened that day. He remembered waking up in his hotel that morning to the sound of the door creaking open when he was quite sure no one should be there. He remembered a flash of metal as he'd stumbled for the light on the table beside his bed. And he remembered a burst of pain that shot through him like a white hot bolt of lightning. He had no idea what had caused it or what had happened afterward, and he didn't really want to think about it. Nothing that could cause a pain like that could be any kind of good.

He wondered where he was now. Where the warm hospital bed and the kind nurse who'd given him the medicines that had made him feel so good before had disappeared to. He wondered how in the world a person could get so lost.

He breathed in deeply and curled into a ball in the chair hoping to rid his body of some of the overwhelming ache. He could really use some of those medicines right now.

He looked around trying his best to clear his muddled mind and take in his surroundings. The room he was in was painted an ugly pale green and there were several rows of chairs that lined a wall and led up to a large glass window. It was dark in the room and he couldn't see anything from his position in one of the chairs against the wall. He slowly stood as best he could and waited for the pains to subside to a dull roar before edging his way weakly along the row of chairs until he was seated right in front of the window.

Something told him not to look before he even took the first glance. Something deep within his brain was telling him he didn't want to see what was on the other side of that glass. But he did it anyway. The sight he saw as he peered down into the bright room made him gasp in horror. His fingers locked into a grip on the ledge of the window as he tried to steel himself. He was looking down into an operating room. An operating room packed with doctors and nurses and the body of a man he knew well... very well. So well in fact that he could almost feel the pain as the nurse knelt on the gurney beside him and pound for pound delivered compressions.

He'd heard of out-of-body experiences before... but he'd never believed you could actually have one.

He watched in horror as the blood spilled down the sides of the table and pooled into a puddle on the floor below. He dared not move or speak or even breathe as he watched the numbers on the screen beside the bed decrease... slowly at first... 110... 85... 76... and then plummet... 37... 20.... 5... and the long steady beep that followed as the line went flat.

"We're losing him!" A doctor yelled and he watched as the crowd of people backed away from the table "CLEAR"... and the way his body jumped before his very eyes at the shock delivered.

And he felt his head begin to spin and his body give way to the weakness he was now overcome by. Shock after shock, "Clear" after "clear", he clung to the window and stared down in horror at his own body giving up there on the table below him. And at the same time his own spirit giving up there in that operating room viewing theatre.

He felt his heart actually burst when the doctor delievered the final shock. It was a pain beyond any pain he'd ever felt before and he gasped as he sank to the floor and clutched his chest. This so could not be Heaven. Someone help him... someone save him.

And then in an instant the pain was gone. He took a deep breath and stood and peered once more through the window to the operating room below. But now all he could see was a brillant light and he could feel the steady rhythm of a calming, healthy heart.

He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. So this was it. He knew it before it happened. He knew it before he heard the words. He leaned back and took one last deep breath.

And the last thing he heard before his entire world went black...

"Official time of death -- 9:32 pm."

"I'm Officer Boscorelli," he heard a familiar voice say to the bodyguards outside the door, "I'm here to speak with Mr. Littrell."

He watched as the door slowly creaked open across the room and held his breath, hoping the bodyguards had been wise enough to ask for identification... two types hopefully... three would be even better. If he was lucky they'd fingerprinted him out in the hallway and then at least if he killed him they'd know who the culprit was. He didn't feel he could trust anyone anymore, especially someone he'd never met before that morning.

The door continued to open even after he'd tried his best to will it closed again, and as it opened a light shined in revealing the figure of a man in the doorway. He removed his hat swiftly as he shuffled his way inside, allowing the light from the hallway to filter in behind him and slowly unveil his familiar face.

"Mr. Littrell?" He spoke softly as Brian waved him in and tried his best to lift himself to a sitting position on his bed, struggling through the pain with his teeth clenched. He ran his bruised fingers through his hair in a futile attempt to make himself look somewhat presentable. He was thankful that at least he recognized this man, even if he didn't know him personally... or even his name. It was the same officer who'd called for help that morning when the wounds he'd tried his best to ignore finally got the better of him.

Officer Boscorelli extended a hand as he took the seat next to Brian's hospital bed, "I'm Officer Maurice Boscorelli with the NYPD Crime Scene Unit. We met briefly this morning at the hotel. I know this is a difficult time for you and your friends, but I need to ask you a few questions."

Brian hesitated, but only momentarily before nodding and reaching out to shake the man's hand. "I understand," he finally spoke, his voice weak and filled with the nervousness of an entire days worth of chaos, "and please, call me Brian."

Bosco nodded and pulled out a pad of paper from his breast pocket. Brian never took his eyes off the man, watching as he maneuvered himself into a comfortable position in the seat and pulled the pen from behind his ear. The officer was a younger man and Brian found himself wondering how anyone could actually do his job and still be able to live a normal life. He had to shake the memories of the morning from his head yet again. The horror and the gore of the sight of his best friend laying there on the floor of their hotel room as the blood from his wounds pooled around him. How could anyone see those kinds of sights on a daily basis and not completely lose faith in humanity?

"Are you ready?" he heard the young officer ask as he closed his eyes and leaned back against his pillow in the bed.

No. He would never be ready for something like this.

Even as he asked the question Bosco cringed. "Are you ready." It was a simple question really, and one he was required to ask every single time he began a witness interview... but it was one, that as a human being who cared about other human beings... he thouroughly dreaded.

Of course the young man wasn't "ready."

Who would be?

He watched as Brian sat back further in the bed, opened his eyes again and nodded his head. The two of them sat there next to each other for a few moments as an uncomfortable silence fell between them. Bosco couldn't help but watch as Brian stared blankly out the window past his head and for the second time that day he felt sorry for the man. He knew he'd been through hell that day. Watching one of his friends attacked and being attacked himself. Bosco himself had been in similar positions before... too many times to count. He'd lost fellow officers in the line of duty -- officers that he'd worked with for years and loved and he'd known the entire time that it could just as easily have been him. He'd stood on the sidelines and witnessed innocent paramedics and fire fighters die at the hands of criminals who didn't give a damn that they were just trying to do their jobs. He'd stood by and watched as a good friend put a gun to his head and commited suicide on the roof of a building, completely powerless to do anything to stop him. He'd lived through September 11th and it's aftermath and somehow managed, despite the things he saw that day, to keep going. And not all that long ago he'd nearly lost his own life in an attack against his unit. Because of all of this, he recognized the look in Brian's eyes for what it truly was -- sadness, confusion and grief. The young man had been through so much that day and here he was getting ready to ask him to relive it all over again.

"Before we start..." Brian's words pulled Bosco from his thoughts and he turned towards him and nodded for him to continue, "... have you heard anything about Aj... about our friend who was injured."

All Bosco could do was shake his head. He'd gone straight from the hotel to the station and from there he'd come straight here to this hospital room. He had no idea how any of the victims were doing and he knew that even if he needed that information, there was no one in this hospital who had the rights to release it to him. Only family members were allowed to know and then, only if it was their desire did the detectives get informed.

"We're only informed when a victim dies," Bosco responded feeling he could at least divulge this much information to Mr. Littrell, "and thus far I've heard nothing."

"So that's good then," Brian asked, his eyes growing a little wider with hope, "that means he's still alive?"

"As far as I'm aware."

He knew he shouldn't be telling Brian this at all, but he also knew if it were his friend laid up somewhere in the hospital and he wasn't allowed to see him or know what was happening that he would probably go insane. So he didn't see that it could hurt.

"Okay," Brian nodded as he sat a little straighter in his bed, "I'm ready now."

"Start from the beginning and tell me everything that you remember about this morning."

Brian leaned his head once more against the pillow and took a deep breath. All of the things he'd been trying so hard not to think about all day... now this man was telling him he had to. He closed his eyes and tried his best to think about the night before, the last good memories he had of all four of them together. They'd played to a nearly sold out house, the fans screaming their names and it reminded him, as it always did when they played a big crowd of the times when they were so insanely famous that everyone knew who they were. They'd finished up the show and headed over to the after party where they'd hung out together for longer than they did at most after parties. They'd danced and had drinks and they'd even attempted some kareokee to please the fans. It had been one of the best nights Brian had had with his bandmates since Kevin had left the group. He felt like they were just getting into the groove of things... and then this morning...

He took another deep breath and began...

"Aj and I both got into our rooms about 2 am. We were exhausted and I remember barely being able to stay awake long enough to brush my teeth and get undressed. When I finally crashed Aj was laying on his bed flipping through the channels on the tv. That's the last thing I remember before waking up this morning."

Bosco nodded. "And what woke you up this morning?"

"I remember thinking I was dreaming. I remember not believing that I was really awake at all. I heard some sort of popping noise and at first it didn't register to me what it was because I was in a total daze. I think it wasn't until the last pop that I realized I was hearing something inside the room... that the sound was really close and that it didn't sound like popping anymore... it sounded like a gunshot."

"What did you do at that point... when you decided that what you were hearing was a gunshot?"

"I was still half asleep. I remember at that point, even though I knew what I was hearing and that I was convinced it was inside my room, I still thought I was dreaming. And there's that point in dreams when sometimes you realize you're having a nightmare and you can force yourself to wake up... that's what I tried to do. I remember thinking, I need to wake up right now and I thought that's what happened because I really felt awake then... but before I even had a chance to open my eyes... I realized it wasn't a dream at all."

He shuddered. This was the part he least wanted to remember. These were the moments he would like to lock away and never think about again. The strength of the man's hands as they'd wrapped tightly around his throat, choking the very breath out of his body. The seemingly endless number of punches delivered to his gut. The feeling when he finally had the courage and strength to open his eyes and... and... well he couldn't think about what happened after that.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you know you're about to die... but that didn't happen for Brian. He hadn't felt anything but fear in the moments that followed. He hadn't been able to do anything but gasp. He hadn't thought about anything at all except... "I'm going to die."

"Brian?"

He jumped slightly, startled by the sound of Officer Boscorelli's voice from beside him. He'd gotten so lost within his thoughts that for a few moments he'd forgotten why he forced himself to think about them to begin with.

"Are you okay?"

Did he want the honest answer to that question? Or the one he'd been handing out to doctor's and nurses and even his best friends and family members all day long...

"I'm okay." He finally lied.

"What happened then?"

Brian took another deep breath in, knowing he had to get it over with. Knowing he had to tell someone and this was as good a time as any. "I felt his hands around my throat. He was choking me and I couldn't breathe and it hurt and it had taken me by total surprise. I struggled for a second before I finally opened my eyes and tha... tha..." he struggled to release the final words, "that's when he put the gun against my head."

"And what did you do?"

"Nothing," And it was true. Brian shivered at the thought of how at that moment he'd looked death in the face... and fearfully accepted it. "He pulled the trigger... and nothing happened. He pulled it again and again... and nothing... just nothing..."

Brian raised his head when he heard Nick trying to stiffle his sobs in the bed across the room. He shook his head and wiped the tears that were forming on his own cheeks. He hadn't thought about Nick being there in the room with him. About the fact that this was the first time he was hearing any of this... that he hadn't told him before... that he hadn't talked at all about any of what he'd been through. He knew it must be as difficult for Nick to hear the details of what had happened as it was for him to talk about it.

"... finally I kicked him..." Brian continued, his voice weak and strained, his eyes aimed towards where he'd buried his hands beneath the covers, "And that's when he left."

"Brian," Bosco lifted his pen momentarily after furiously scratching out details for that last half hour, "you say 'he', how do you know that it was a man?"

Brian wiped the tears that were now pouring down his face and looked Bosco directly in the eyes. "You know these things. His arms were thick and he was powerful. He reeked of sweat and he had a full gray beard on his face that I just know wasn't fake. I just know it was a man... I just know."

"Can you tell me anything else that describes him Brian? His eye color, height, what he was wearing?"

"I didn't see much... he was holding me down tightly and I was dizzy from having his hands around my neck. But I saw the beard for sure... and he was wearing a red baseball cap... and that's all I can tell you..."

Both men jumped as Brian finished speaking and a shrill screech sounded out from across the room as Nick shot up in his hospital bed and Bosco jumped out of his chair and ran over.

"Are you okay Mr. Carter?" He asked trying to calm the young man who was shaking now, and rocking back and forth.

"No!" He shouted as he leaned forward and buried his head in his hands... "Oh my God... Oh my God."

Howie paced back and forth across the narrow floor of the private waiting area. What was taking so long? Shouldn't they know something by now? Shouldn't they at least know enough to come in here and tell them that everything was going to be okay?

He tred the tiles of the room once more before stopping long enough to reach out and place his hand on the shoulder of his best friend's mother.

"Denise," he whispered, and she slowly lifted her face from where she'd had it hidden behind her hands and nodded at him to let him know that she was still there. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally too. Howie didn't know how she was holding up, how she could possibly be holding up... but he wasn't about to leave her side. He remembered all the year's of watching his sister go through hell before she'd finally succumbed to her battle with Lupus... but he did remember how everytime things had gotten bad his family had pulled together and been there for each other.

He was all Denise had... at least right now, in this unfamiliar city without her family... without her Aj.

He sat down beside her in one of the stiff plastic chairs that only a moron could have designed, knowing sometimes family members waited hours and hours to find out the fate of their loved ones. He bounced his knee nervously and bit his bottom lip. He rubbed his hands together and prayed for a miracle. He felt her warm hand slip into his and he bit down hard to keep from crying.

"He'll be okay," she whispered... "He'll be okay."

And Howie didn't really know who Denise's words were meant to comfort more -- him or her -- but they worked, at least a little. He breathed in a deep breath and tried not to think about all of the bad things that could happen. What he really wanted, more than anything in the world, was to go back to a few days before and relive the memories of releasing a brand new record and starting a brand new tour and feeling, brand new again.

His thoughts were interrupted by the clicking sound of the door handle across from them. And in the briefest of moments that occurred between when he heard that handle jiggle and when the door finally swung open, a thousand thoughts raced through his mind. Thoughts of the past... of that morning... of the future. And his heart soared and it sank with the "what ifs" and "what if nots". And his mind was an endless jumble of emotions he couldn't express.

But the second he saw the doctor he knew.

"Ms. McLean?" The older man whispered as he stepped inside and closed the door behind himself.

And Howie knew before the doctor even spoke that the news wasn't going to be good. He had experience in this department, enough to know that when a doctor comes solemnly into the room, his voice quiet, his head bowed to the floor, that things hadn't gone as planned. That your life was about to change forever and probably not in any kind of a good way. Doctors didn't like to give bad news. They loved to give good news, but bad news was something they'd rather pass off to the nurses, or their attendings, or their interns. So when the honest-to-God doctor walked in the room and removed his surgical hat and held it between his fists... Howie knew. And he looked away, because this was something he couldn't watch.

Aj's mom lifted her eyes to meet the doctor's and Howie felt the grip tighten on his hand. He wondered if she was as exprienced as he was in this type of thing... or if knowing this stuff just came naturally. He looked back up and watched as the doctor walked over and sat in the chair across from them, turning slowly towards where he was sitting before saying quietly, "I need to speak with Ms. McLean privately."

Howie didn't move though. He hardly breathed. He knew this was one of those moments in life where nothing would ever again be the same, and he wasn't about to leave Denise's side... not at least until she asked him to. He sat in silence and waited for her to speak as the doctor watched the both of them. After a few moments he went to stand. Maybe she was unsure about all of this. Maybe she didn't want Howie to have to hear what he knew the doctor was going to say. But even as his knees began to straighten he felt her there beside him pulling him back into the chair. The doctor noticed too... silent wishes being made for him to stay right where he was.

"Your son was brought in this morning with extensive injuries to his chest and abdomen," the doctor began.

Howie could feel his own heart breaking as the words exited the doctor's mouth. He could feel Denise stiffening beside him. He could hear her breaths becoming deeper... he could feel his own lungs struggling to breathe. 'Just say it'... was going through his mind as the doctor rambled on for a few more minutes about the extent of Aj's injuries and what they had tried to accomplish in the operating room. And then...

"We did everything we could to stabilize your son's injuries... but his heart was just not strong enough. I'm so sorry."

He felt Denise's hand release from his own as the sound of her sobs echoed through the room. He tried to reach out, to take hold of her before she lost it, but she fell to the floor in a puddle of exhausted, disheartened, distressed tears.

And just like that morning, before Howie could do anything to stop it... once again, his world came crashing down.

Nick had flown out of his bed like a bullet shot from a gun when he'd heard the words exit his best friend's mouth. There was no way. Seriously... it couldn't be right. It just couldn't be. No way in hell could he possibly have walked right past a fucking murderer getting onto the elevator that morning in the lobby and simply not known. And not just any murderer... no the murderer... the evil scum of the earth who'd been upstairs only moments before it seemed, doing his best to kill one of his brothers, and succeeding in so gruesomely killing his manager.

His stomach turned at the thought.

No way. Absolutely no fucking way.

Officer Boscorelli was at his side in a second, placing a warm hand firmly upon Nick's arm. He didn't even flinch when Nick jerked at his touch. Instead he kept his hand on his arm and led him safely and calmly back to the confines of his hospital bed, speaking comforting words the entire time.

"It's alright now Mr. Carter. Just take it easy. There you go, back into bed. Just try to relax."

Yeah right.

How in the hell was he supposed to relax when there was a murderous madman on the loose and he had clearly, CLEARLY, been the one to let him get away. He could never let himself relax again.

"What is it?" Officer Boscorelli broke the tense silence after a few moments had passed during which Nick laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling without saying a word. Just wondering how in the hell he could have possibly let this happen. Could he do anything right? Ever?

"Mr. Carter..." the officer prompted again, this time his voice grew stern, "Do you remember something? Anything? Tell me."

Nick nodded towards the officer and took a huge breath of air, gulping in a few lungs full as he tried his best not to puke.

"I.. I saw him. A man with a baseball cap and a tan jacket and a beard... DAMMIT! I SAW him..."

Brian's head shot up this time and Bosco glanced over quickly to make sure he wasn't going to be the next to come barreling out of his bed. When he didn't... when he simply looked over at his friend, who seemed to refuse to look back, and then lay back down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling himself, Boscorelli took the moment to bend down and retrieve his notebook from the floor where he'd tossed it in his haste to help Nick. He stood up and took a seat, this time in the chair beside the other young man's bed. This could be the break in the case that they really needed, and he didn't want to miss a single detail.

Nick couldn't shake the feeling that Brian was watching him from across the room... staring at him... hating him. His best friend for years and years and now the two of them couldn't even look at each other. Or at least, he couldn't bring himself to look at Brian. How long would this last... this strangeness between them... and surely then, between all of them?

Forever maybe.

"Tell me exactly what you saw," Boscorelli spoke pulling Nick away from his thoughts, and effectively causing him to tear his eyes away from Brian's slumped figure on the other bed. He tried his best to remember that morning. It wasn't a difficult thing to do.

"I passed him on my way into the elevator... that's all."

And it was... even if it wasn't.

It was all there was to Nick's story. A momentary brush of the shoulder and he'd let him get away. Even if inside his own mind the story was so much more. He could remember exactly the moment he'd seen the man as the elevator dinged to the lobby and the doors slid open. He could remember how the man had kept his head low so that the two of them had never made eye contact. He could remember just exactly how it had felt as the man had brushed past him, rather harshly, to get by. How it almost hurt.

'Just a businessman in a hurry... just like everyone else.'

That had been Nick's assumption at the time.

How incredibly wrong he had been.

But those details, the ones his own mind wouldn't let him forget weren't important now. Just that he'd seen the man... touched the man... and that he'd let him get away.

"Can you describe anymore than the jacket and the baseball cap?" He didn't let on, but Boscorelli was hopeful now. The fact that he had seen this man in the lobby... the lobby of a very nice hotel in New York City that he knew full well was equipped with video surveillance cameras whose tapes were now being safely stored in their NYPD headquarters... this was a HUGE lead.

"Not really," Nick said, "just that he had the jacket and the hat and the beard... he never looked up."

Boscorelli nodded and took down the information. At least it was something... and something was certainly better than nothing at all.

"I mentioned him to the other officer this afternoon."

Boscorelli nodded again and took more notes. The fact that he'd already mentioned this in detail to another officer made things even better. Made his story more credible.

Just then there was a flutter of noises in the hallway outside that caused all three of the men to turn towards the door to the hospital room. Officer Boscorelli couldn't help but stand and instinctively put his hand to the gun around his waist. If someone was coming, he'd be ready. Instead, the door opened slowly to reveal a doctor and several nurses, escorted by a barage of security guards, one of them gently pushing a wheelchair where a young man was seated. The young man he'd interviewed just that morning.

Howie was pale and somewhat green, tears flooded his eyes as they met with Nick's and Brian's each in turn.

Bosco watched as Brian reached to grip the railings on the side of his bed, pain evident on his face as he tried his hardest to sit up.

Nick, who was already seated, could do nothing but stare.

"What is it D?" Brian whispered as they pushed him further into the room and a nurse attempted to listen to his pulse despite Howie's best attempts to wave her away. "Is it Aj?"

All Howie could do was nod his head and inhale deeply the sobs that threatened to come once more, before he managed to choke out the words... "He's gone guys... Aj's gone."