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** AJ **

“We need to join the forum.”

“You want to do what now?” Brian pulled his head away from the back of the couch and looked at me as if I had just announced that we all needed to strip naked and run around the room. “We’re not supposed to access the Internet.”

“We’re not supposed to use social media.” I corrected. “We’re allowed to browse the Internet as long as we don’t post anything from any of our official accounts.”

Brian screwed up his face. “We’re already in enough danger as it is.”

“Exactly.” I tugged the laptop across the coffee table and rubbed my finger against the mouse pad. The screen sprung to life and I quickly clicked on the Google Chrome icon. “Don’t you want to see what’s being said on the forums?”

“No.” Brian empathetically shook his head. “Right now, all I want is for Kevin and Howie to walk through the door.”

I removed my hand from the keyboard and raised my eyes to Brian. “What kinda stuff did they ask you?”

Brian checked over his shoulder to make sure that Detective Eaton and Detective Bell were still tucked away in the living room with Nick at the far end of the house. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We should wait until they’re gone to talk about this.”

“Did they ask you to make a list?” I matched Brian’s hushed tone. “It was fucking embarrassing ...”

“Okay, boys!”

I cut myself off mid sentence and flinched visibly as Detective Eaton strolled into the family room. Nick was trailing along behind the older man looking sufficiently terrified and mortified all at the same time. I tried to catch Nick’s eye, but he didn’t give me the opportunity as he slumped into the room and threw himself down next to me on the couch.

“We’ll be in touch with you every few hours.” Detective Eaton carried on without hesitation. “Tony and Joey will continue to monitor the house from across the street, and we’ve contracted additional unmarked security personnel to patrol the neighbourhood at night. I don’t think you need me to tell you again that you are no longer allowed to leave the premises.”

“What about Kevin and Howie?” I demanded. “Do you have additional people out looking for them?”

If he was at all offended by my angry tone, Detective Eaton didn’t show it. “We’re doing everything that we can to try and find your friends. The information that the three of you have just provided will likely be very helpful.”

Nick let out a distorted grunting sound that caused everyone in the room to momentarily turn in his direction. His face was flushed, and I knew just by looking at him that the detectives had asked him to make a list.

“Call us if you need anything, or if you think of anything else that you feel may be helpful.” Detective Eaton recovered swiftly from the distraction. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

I waited until I heard the lock on the front door click into place before I resumed the discussion that Brian and I had been having. “Did they ask you guys to make a list?”

Nick groaned again and dragged both of his hands down his face. “I couldn’t even remember half of their names – I had been so high – I don’t remember what I did with the majority of them – Most were in club bathrooms – I think there must be more than I listed!”

I gave Nick a sympathetic look as I struggled to make sense of his disjointed ramblings. Truth be told, the lists that Nick and I had submitted were likely eerily similar. Mine had been in the double digits, and I was pretty sure that there were many more names that I would never even be able to begin to remember. The whole thing had been grossly embarrassing, and I had easily picked up on the detectives’ silent judgement as I had scrawled name after name on the paper.

“I couldn’t remember all of their names either.” I admitted, patting Nick roughly on the leg. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Nick dropped his hands from his face. He looked like he was, once again, on the verge of tears. “What kind of a horrible person doesn’t remember the names of the people he’s slept with? My list was in the double digits, and I’m not talking about the teens!”

“You weren’t in a good place for a long time.” Brian gently added his input. “You can’t beat yourself up about the things that you did in the past.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” Nick gave Brian a look that was borderline spiteful. “I’m sure your list could easily fit on a post-it note.”

I cringed at the wounded expression that crossed Brian’s face. He blinked hard and I noticed that his eyes were wet. “I’ve made my own mistakes.”

I ran my hand through my hair and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. The police weren’t supposed to have come in here and drudged up the past, Kevin and Howie weren’t supposed to be missing, and the three of us definitely weren’t supposed to be sitting here and having this conversation.

“How many?” Nick demanded. He sounded angry, but I was pretty sure that his tone wasn’t intentional. The guy was clearly upset. “Leighanne, the chick before her – whatever her name was – and who else?”

“A few.” Brian whispered. “There are a couple more, not including the ones that – the ones that just, you know, did me favours.”

I closed my eyes and racked my brain for something to say. I was positive that Brian’s number wasn’t huge. In fact, his list was probably average. Still, Brian was clearly struggling with the admission, and I wasn’t about to discount his feelings simply because my list and Nick’s list were much longer.

“Favours?” Nick’s tone had switched from anger to astonishment. “How many women have done you favours? Are we talking recently?”

“Nick!” I shot my arm out and knocked the blonde roughly in the chest, opening my eyes in the process. “We don’t need to know that.”

In actuality, I was dying to know the answer to Nick’s questions, but one look at Brian told me that I had done the right thing. Brian was staring down at his feet, and his cheeks were wet and flushed. Although I felt badly that Brian was upset, I found the revelation that he had a past that he wasn’t entirely proud of to be strangely comforting. At that moment, the similarities between the three of us were disturbingly apparent.

“Could you guys name any of the women that Kevin or Howie have been with?” Nick quickly diverted the conversation. I could see him also taking in Brian’s tortured face out of the corner of his eye. “I could only think of a couple for each of them.”

“I remembered a few from the early days.” Brian wiped discreetly at his cheeks. “I don’t think that either one of them has been with anyone, aside from their wives, since they got married.”

“I don’t think so either.” I added. “The detectives were asking me about the cruise, but we meet so many women on the boat that it’s hard to say what happens. After I go to bed, I have no fucking clue what the rest of you get up to.”

“We should know this information.” Nick’s face and voice hardened in unison. “Since when did we all start keeping secrets?”

I snorted so hard that the motion hurt my nose. “We’ve always kept secrets from each other, Nick. If you didn’t realize that before now, you’ve been doing a damn good job of fooling yourself.”

Nick frowned at the harshness of my words. “I don’t think I really knew that we had secrets from each other until you announced that you were going to rehab. I was a kid, remember? You all made damn sure that my purity bubble was kept firmly intact. You all made it crystal clear that I wasn’t to be included in any discussions that weren’t rated PG.”

“We didn’t do it to be mean.” Brian countered. “Like you said, you were young. We were trying to protect you.”

“A lot of good that did.” Nick shot back. “I turned out to be the one who’s the most messed up.”

“We’re all messed up, Nick.” I argued. “Every single fucking one of us has issues. That’s become pretty obvious over these last few days.”

“Do you guys really think that someone random woman from our past is behind this?” Brian rubbed at his eyes and leaned back against the couch cushions. “Did we really hurt someone so badly that they want to kill us?”

“I was a world class douche to a lot of women.” Nick admitted. “I want to say that the detectives are barking up the wrong tree, but they may actually be on the right track.”

“So, why did they take Howie and Kevin first?” I mimicked Brian’s movements and leaned back against the couch, running a hand across my tired face. “If someone really is harboring a grudge against one of us, it’s most likely against me or Nick.”

“They took Howie and Kevin first because they know that the three of us will be harder to control.” Brian delivered his theory slowly and purposefully. “The detectives said that the un-sub knows our behaviour better than we do. What better way to get the three of us to cooperate than to use Howie and Kevin as leverage? Let’s face it, without the two of them around, the three of us are more likely to act on impulse. Hell, we proved that this morning when we jumped headlong into the fight with Joey.”

“If that’s really the case then we’re in serious trouble.” I acknowledged. “We have to figure out how to make sure that we’re not so easily manipulated.”

“Let’s get on the forum.” Nick interrupted, hastily turning the laptop in his direction. “It’s bullshit for the police to think that the un-sub knows us better than we know ourselves! We should be able to pick out a crazy obsessed fan from a mile away. If the police think that the chick who took Howie and Kevin belongs to this website than we need to see if we can narrow down the choices.”

“That’s exactly what I was saying earlier!” I slid forward on the couch and bent over so that I would have a better view of the screen. “Brian tried to talk me out of it.”

“I didn’t try and talk you out of it!” Brian sounded highly defensive. “I just reminded you that we’re not supposed to be accessing the Internet.”

Nick rolled his eyes as he navigated to bsbcrazies.net. “Bri, are you in on this or not?”

“You act like I have a choice.” Brian hauled himself to his feet and moved to join me and Nick on the larger couch.

Brian sat down next to me and the three of us huddled together; our eyes locked on our own faces as Nick clicked on the link to access the forums. I was literally holding my breath as I waited for the page to load. The woman who wanted to kill us belonged to the website, I was sure of it. The only thing I wasn’t entirely sure about was whether or not the three of us would be smart enough to figure out which member was the un-sub.

“Fuck!” Nick banged his fingers against the keyboard in frustration. “We need to create an account in order to access the message boards.”

“So, let’s make an account.” I pulled the laptop away from Nick and repositioned it so that I was in control of the keyboard. “What should our username be?”

“It has to be something that a fan would think of.” Brian paused. “Something like: ‘bsb_cutie’, or some crap like that.”

“That’s lame.” Nick shook his head. “What about: ‘nicks_hott_butt’?”

“I am NOT logging in to a website with a username about your ass!” I quickly vetoed Nick’s suggestion. “How about: ‘aj_the_sex_god’?”

Brian dropped his head into his hands and let out a disgruntled moan. “Please tell me that we’re not really sitting here arguing about this.”

I laughed openly at Brian’s reaction. Of course the three of us would find time to argue about a stupid username when our lives were on the line. I was still laughing to myself as I dropped my fingers to the keyboard and quickly entered my second choice: ‘backstreet_love_parade’. I hit submit before Nick or Brian could protest and watched as the screen was redirected to a secondary registration page with a series of questions.

“You have to prove that you’re a real fan in order to join?” Nick dropped his mouth into a pout as he read the rules. “How stupid is that?”

“Who cares if it’s stupid?” Brian was beginning to sound agitated. “Let’s just answer the questions. There are only four of them. How hard can they possibly be? They’re about us for Christ’s sake!”

“Question One: Which of Nick’s twin siblings is older; Aaron or Angel?” I read the question off of the screen and turned to Nick expectantly. “Well, who’s the oldest?”

There was a long pause as Nick’s eyes darted feverishly around the room. It was as if he was hoping that the answer would somehow materialize in front of him. “Angel?” He finally guessed. “They were born like two minutes apart.”

“Are you sure?” I berated. “I’m pretty sure that we won’t be allowed to continue if we get it wrong.”

“I’m sure.” Nick insisted. His voice was hard, but his eyes gave away his uncertainly. I could practically see the smoke billowing out of his ears as he racked his brain in an attempt to determine whether or not his guess was correct.

Against my better judgement, I entered Angel’s name into the box. I didn’t let out my breath until the second question popped up on the screen.

“See!” Nick cried out in triumph. “I told you that Angel was older!”

“Great.” I rolled my eyes as I launched into the second question. “Question Two: What high school did Brian attend?”

“Tates Creek” Brian supplied the answer without missing a beat. “Next question.”

“Question Three: What is the title of the book that AJ’s mother penned about his rise to fame?”

I groaned inwardly as I read the question aloud and simultaneously entered ‘Backstreet Mom’ into the answer field. I absolutely loathed that book.

I breathed another sigh of relief as the final question loaded. “Question Four: What is the name of the management company that Howie co-founded with CJ Huyer?”

I could feel my eyes widening as I continued to stare at the screen. I had absolutely no idea what the name of Howie’s company was. Judging by the silence that was enveloping me from both sides, it was pretty obvious that neither Nick nor Brian knew the answer to the question either.

“How the fuck do people know this stuff?” Nick muttered. “Do our fans really know us this well?”

“Let’s just Google it.” Brian suggested. “But, we have to promise that we will never tell Howie that we didn’t know the answer on our own.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.” I agreed, clicking on the option to open another tab.

I felt more than a little guilty as I waited for the additional tab to open. It wasn’t as if Howie had just founded the company a few days ago. Hell, Neverest had even been our opening act for the Canadian leg of the NKOTBSB tour. The fact that none of us knew the name of his company was beyond pathetic. What had we become?

“Shit!”

I snapped out of my trance as traces of Nick’s spittle connected with my cheek. I refocused my eyes on the screen and swallowed hard. A message window had appeared informing us that we were not allowed to open another tab or to navigate away from the site. Apparently, if we chose to do either one of those things then our access to the forums would be permanently denied.

“I guess we weren’t the only people who thought to use Google.” I sighed. “Now what?”

“We can figure this out.” Brian encouraged. “CJ was in that band … what was the name?”

“3 something.” Nick shrugged. “3 guys, 3 men, 3 – 3 dudes?”

“3 Deep!” I shouted, slapping my hands against my knees. “God, those guys were shit!”

Brian let out an undignified snort as he struggled to hold in his laughter. “The name of the company is definitely a combination of 3 Deep and Backstreet. I remember that much at least.”

“Back-3, Street-3, Back-Deep, Street-Deep, 3-Street, 3-Back …” Nick began rhyming off the potential combinations on his fingers.

“3 Street Management!” Brian interrupted; his eyes lighting up in recognition. “That sounds familiar!”

Brian’s excitement was encouraging. I looked to Nick for confirmation. “Do we want to go with ‘3 Street’?”

Nick nodded. “It sounds like the most logical choice.”

I quickly keyed in the answer before Brian had a chance to second-guess his memory. Almost immediately, the page redirected to a screen welcoming 'backstreet_love_parade' to the forums of bsbcrazies.net.

The smiles on Brian’s and Nick’s faces were infectious as I looked back and forth between them. “We’re in, boys!” I announced. “We’re in.”