Sunday morning. One day left. 

“I’m going to murder him.”

The way Brian seethed his sentence Howie had no doubt in his mind that he was telling the absolute truth. For the past hour they’d sat at the table while Brian paced back and forth seeing red, with steam pouring from his ears. 

It was Howie who was first to get up that day and when he ventured downstairs he immediately felt that something was off. There was just something about the house that seemed different. He checked that the doors were closed, that everything that was supposed to be out was out and while walking through the living room he spotted Nick’s bedroom door open. Not something that would normally be unusual but given the circumstances it sent crippling worry through Howie’s spine. When he ran over to find that Elena was gone, it was seconds before AJ and Brian were awoken and they’d been discussing it ever since. 

They would have never expected Nick to take off with their captive; it was as likely as a bear becoming a vegetarian. 

“Brian, let’s just sit down and think about this,” Howie said calmly, watching his friend pace like an angry tiger.

AJ laughed, “Think about it? Hell no! I’m with Brian; let’s kill the stupid son of a bitch!”

“Son of a bitch,” Brian repeated, turning towards his partners in crime.

“That’s what I just said,” AJ furrowed his eyebrows, wondering what Brian was getting at.

“No, no, Nick really is a son of a bitch! He doesn’t have any friends, where else could he have possibly gone?” he questioned, reaching for the phone.

Brian dialed a number quickly then waited for someone to pick up on the other end. 

“Who is he calling?” AJ wondered, watching Brian on the phone.

“I think he’s calling Nick’s mother,” Howie said, the two of them watching Brian curiously.

“No answer,” Brian said, turning the phone off, “Suspicious.”

“You don’t honestly think that he would take her from here then drive her two blocks away down to his mother’s house, do you?” Howie asked with a laugh.

“This is Nick we’re talking about,” Brian reminded him and they all nodded with the realization that it was indeed a possibility. 

“I really don’t think he’s at his mother’s,” Howie sighed and leaned back in his seat. They had a real problem on their hands.

“You know,” AJ spoke up, “We don’t really need to worry just yet.”

“Why’s that?” Brian asked curiously, not stopping his incessant pacing.

“Well, we have until tomorrow to find him and even if we don’t…as long as Richardson doesn’t pay, we can still send him the video and we’ll have more time to find Nick before the next drop off time.”

Brian laughed and shook his head, “And what if Nick is bringing her back to her parent’s house today? Then there will be NO money at all! We have to find him right now and make sure she doesn’t have any contact with her parents or the police!”

“Why do you think he wouldn’t have already brought her back if he was going to anyway? He’s a huge pussy, I can’t see him being in any rush to bring her back home,” AJ responded, knowing that Nick couldn’t have made that much of a change in his personality since the girl came around.

“I know Nick,” Brian said, thinking of all of the memories he had of the weak-minded boy he used to be and the still gullible man he’d become, “He will be afraid of the police, and he won’t want to go there right away. But I know what he’s probably thinking, and he’ll hide out for a bit until he thinks we won’t find him, then he’ll probably just let her go. Either way she’s getting back home, and we’re fucked for the money.”

Howie thought about what Brian was saying and for him it just didn’t seem to add up, “Then tell me this, almighty ‘Nick whisperer’, how long do you honestly think it’ll take for her to convince him that it’s okay to let her go?”

“Not very long,” Brian said with a shrug and a chuckle. When his own words sunk in his eyes went wide and he grabbed his keys off of the counter, “We have to find him, NOW.”

The three of them bolted into action and ran out into the driveway towards Brian’s car. 

“Should we split up and look?” Howie asked, pulling his own keys out of his pocket. 

Brian nodded, “You two go together look everywhere that Nick has ever hung out in recent years. I’ll check out his mother’s, and places that we used to go when we were kids. Maybe he would try to hide somewhere that he thinks we would have forgotten about.”

“Keep your cell phone on,” AJ instructed as he and Howie took off on the hunt. 

Brian watched them leave then made his way back into the house and up to his bedroom. He walked to his desk and, using his keys, opened a small drawer at the bottom. He sighed as he took out a small Smith and Wesson, .40-caliber pistol. He had never been a fan of guns, nor did he ever think there was use for them until a particular occasion where one of their schemes was uncovered and a man (who had just lost all of his savings) came after them. He had literally hunted them down, and since then Brian felt the need to keep the gun handy for protection. He never thought there would be a time where he would need it to threaten one of his oldest friends. He checked the gun over quickly, making sure it was loaded and the safety was on before shoving it in the waistband of his pants. 

If Nick wouldn’t hand her over quietly then he would just have to make him. 

Brian’s first stop was at Nick’s mother’s house. He didn’t believe that he was going to be there, but he needed to retrace all of the places that Nick had been the day before. He pulled up in front of the Carter residence, and noticed that Nick’s car wasn’t in the driveway. 

“Well, he’s not here,” he said to himself as he got out and made his way towards the door. He knocked a few times, looking in the side window to see if there was anyone moving. Just when Brian was about to give up and move on to his next idea the door swung open and a very dishevelled Jane Carter stood before him. 

“What do you want? You keep knocking!” she snapped without even looking to see who it was at the door. 

“Nick here?” Brian asked, trying to keep his eyes off of the half dressed middle-aged woman in front of him.

“No, that little low life didn’t come back last night!” she said in an aggravated tone, “He took all my smokes, and didn’t buy me any more or leave me any money, not even a goodbye!” 

“Oh, he didn’t? I’m surprised, I gave him his rent back when I came over yesterday,” Brian lied, knowing how much any money meant to the woman since welfare was more worthwhile than a job to her. (No need for him to wonder where Nick got it from.)

Jane gasped and wrapped her housecoat tighter around her body, “He lied to me! He always gives me something to tide me over. He’s usually such a good boy. Is he doing drugs again Brian?”

Brian shrugged, “I’m not sure, he and I haven’t really talked much lately. Although judging by the way he’s been acting it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Well when you find him, make sure he buys me a carton of smokes!” she growled then slammed the door shut.

Brian sighed, not having gotten any information out of the woman. She didn’t mention anything worthwhile. 

Getting back to his original plan, Brian decided to check out all of the places that Nick used to hang out when he was a kid. It was unlikely that he would have taken Elena to a school or a skate park but stranger things had happened. 

He searched high and low, in everywhere he could possibly think to look. He called hotels and motels and started asking if Nick was a guest even though he knew that Nick had little to no money. Nothing panned out with his calling around so he decided to make his way back home to see what AJ and Howie had dug up. Obviously they hadn’t found anything more than he did since his cell phone hadn’t made a peep, but they might have a better idea of where to look next. 

When he pulled into the driveway he saw that the other two had just arrived and waited for him to get out of the car. 

“Anything?” Howie asked and Brian shook his head. 

“I looked everywhere I could possibly think of that he’d ever hung out before,” Brian let out a frustrated sigh and the three of them headed into the house. 

“We even saw Shannon!” AJ piped up and Brian looked up at him, surprised to hear that name. 

If there were one person in the world that Brian would be okay never seeing again it was Shannon. Nick had started dating Shannon when he was 17 years old, his last year of high school, just months away from independence. Their relationship was an interesting one; in fact it wasn’t too different from AJ’s current relationship. They would walk together and talk together at school but no one would have known they were dating until they got back to one of their houses and fucked like they had been tasked with single-handedly repopulating the world. 

Being window neighbours with Nick during that time period was awkward. It had started as a physical relationship, which then turned into an addictive one. Shannon’s Brother Patrick was a drug dealer and hooked the two teenagers up with anything they could ever want. Shannon was more of a pot smoker, but Nick being as weak as he was it wasn’t too difficult for Patrick to turn him from a little innocent marijuana, onto crack and eventually heroin. The thing that bothered Brian the most even to that day was that Shannon never tried to stop him. She never reprimanded Patrick for turning her boyfriend into a drug addict, and she never asked Nick to stop using heavy drugs. Brian sometimes thought that she liked Nick better when he was high. He’d even witnessed her pull a needle out of Nick’s arm when he was too wasted to do it himself.

The boy then turned from soft spoken, reserved, and naive into an aggressive, violent, and malicious person. As much as Brian wanted to see Nick stand up for himself more often, he didn’t want it like that. He also didn’t like the way Nick was pulling away from him, and turning into a bully. 

Brian wanted his old pitiful Nick back. He wanted the kid that he could verbally push around, but never physically touch. It didn’t take much to get Shannon to leave him alone, she was happy with a few hundred dollars. Patrick was a completely different story because Nick was his meal ticket. Patrick was willing to take money in exchange for Nick’s “freedom” but the sum was far from pocket change. To make the cash Brian enlisted the help of his friends to pull off his very first scam. It was enough, to free Nick from Patrick’s grasp and send the boy to rehab. 

Sometimes Brian blamed Nick for the way his life turned out. If it weren’t for Nick, he could be the lawyer he had always wanted to be. Instead his tuition was what they used to pay for the supplies for the first operation. He often felt like the only reason he kept Nick around for so long was because of all he’d gone through to help him in that year. 

Brian’s attention moved away from the past and onto the conversation that AJ and Howie were having about their trip. 

“Hold on,” Brian stopped them, “You said you saw Shannon right?”

“Yeah,” Howie nodded, “We stopped by the 7-11 he used to work at because he was still friends with that one guy, and we thought someone may have seen him. Anyway, Shannon was working there and she recognized us right away. It took us a couple of seconds to figure out who she was but when we did we asked if she had seen Nick, but she said she hadn’t.”

“No, she knows to stay away from him,” Brian said, thinking out loud, “There’s something right there on the tip of my tongue that I feel like I’m missing. Maybe something his mother said?”

“What did she say?” AJ wondered.

“I don’t know, not much. She said Nick didn’t leave her any money, he took all her cigarettes, she asked me if he was doing drugs again, I’m not sure what my brain is making of all of this.”

“You think Shannon was lying about not seeing him?”

“No,” Brian shook his head. He grunted then sat down at the table, smacking his head with his hand. 

“His mother asked if he was doing drugs again?” Howie asked, sitting down beside Brian, “I think I know what your brain might be trying to tell you.”

“What?” Brian’s head snapped up and he looked at Howie attentively.

“We saw Shannon, his mother asked if he was doing drugs, all of these things have one very distinct thing in common,” he drew it out, letting them all in on his lengthy thought process. 

“Money? Do they have money in common?” AJ asked, tired of listening to Howie go on and on. 

“No,” Brian’s eyes lit up as he figured out what Howie was getting at, “Patrick! They have Patrick in common! Where’s one place we would never have thought to look for him if we hadn’t seen Shannon? Patrick’s house!”

“You really think Nick would take her to a crack house?” AJ asked with an uneasy laugh.

“Do you think that if he showed up anywhere else with that girl wearing nothing but her underwear and beat to all hell that they wouldn’t start asking serious questions?” Howie retorted, “Not only that but her face has been all over the news, someone would have said something.”

“Not Patrick though, he’s probably too out of it to even realize who she is,” Brian stood up from his seat and once again grabbed his keys, “We have to talk to Shannon again, we have to find Patrick! He has to be there!”