Previously...
Part 12 "Red Flag"
[Still the day before on the BSB's plane]
"Brian, I...?" Leighanne walked back in to the room intending to grab her purse before heading off to the others. "Brian!" She quickly ran to the side of her distraught fiancee.
[In a hotel lobby somewhere else in Tampa some half an hour earlier.]
"Shit. Shit. shit!" Dan scanned over the new papers and files David had just faxed him and he knew he had to do something fast. He quickly fished out his phone from his pocket and dialed Scott McGill.
Busy! He must try again. He has to, there was someone else's life at stake now. ...
End of Part 12 *******************************************************
BSBHAB2: Harmony Part 13a "Final Revelations"
[Day before at the BSB Plane in New York]
Leighanne bit her lower lip before embracing Brian to her again. She wasn't the type of person who gets into another mother's business with her kids, but she knew that there had to be a stop put to Jane before she could cause anymore damage. Brian was too far due for a break, and Jane was a definite cause of it.
Leighanne kissed Brian on the head and thought about what she was going to do. *******************************************************
[Somewhere behind a bar in Tampa]
"Dammit!" Dan belted Scott in his seat and headed back to his hotel. There was nothing he could do anymore tonight. *******************************************************
{The bright morning of the following day}
"I'm so so sorry, Nick..." Nick remembered John whispering before the world suddenly spun around him and he went crashing down into darkness.
To be continued...
------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimers: This is only a work of fiction and should only be taken as such. Any resemblances between the other characters to any real, living or dead, persons is highly coincidental. This does not reflect the lives of any of the Backstreet Boys or their family members. This is mainly a PG 13 story. Enjoy -------------------------------------------------------
BSBHAB2: Harmony Part 13b "Final Revelations II"
[Police II: Leighanne's place]
"Sorry, ma'am but we have tried reaching your son at his home phone, and his phone has apparently been disconnected." Officer Chang raised his hand to stiffle any interruptions from those gathered. "We have already made contact with the local Tampa police and have them send a uniform patrol to see if he is okay."
"Is that the best you can do officer?" Leighanne asked quietly. She was left comforting Jane because she was predominantly the only female around. Kevin was nervously waiting for any more information by the window. The other boys had gone out to find if they could charter a small plane to take them quickly to Florida.
"For now, it is yes. We have continued our search for Mr. Mason and so far we haven't had any luck at all. We have also gotten the Tampa police to be on a look out. But they haven't gotten any word on that either." Chang sighed and continued to try and reassure them for a few more minutes before returning to the other detectives to see if there was any more developments. ******************************************************* [Tampa, a hour later]
"Shit, Dan, where did you get this?" Scott McGill thumbed through the information. His earlier hateful convictions quickly giving way to guilt and fear.
"I got that last night. I tried calling you but you were not home." Dan paced back and forth. "There must be something we can do. You know where Nick lives don't you?"
"Yes. Have you at least tried to warn him of this?" Scott looked up a moment.
"Way ahead of you, I called this morning but the phone was out of order."
"Shit," Scott cursed again and picked up his jacket. "Let's go."
Together they headed towards Scott's door where they were suddenly met with an astounding sight.
"YOU?!" Scott and Dan blurted out together. *******************************************************
[Nick's house: Cops]
"Yeah, Detective, Mr. Carter is no longer home. There aren't any signs of foul play, but his car is still in the garage." The officer looked out the window to see a honda speed away the opposite direction of the house. "Wait a minute -- " He tried to focus on the license plate when something broke under his shoes. "I was wrong, Detective, there had been a struggle hear, albeit a short one. We will do what we can." He quickly hung up the phone and bolted out the door to his own car to call in the new information about Nick's disappearance.
[Honda speeding away]
"Shit, we're too late." Scott hit the steering wheel none-too-lightly. They were all feeling fearful now. Dan fidgetted through the stack of information they had gotten on John, while their third sat trembling in the back seat partially hidden by shadows of the quickly darkening overcast sky.
"Wait a minute, Scott, did you see this?!" Dan blurted, causing Scott and their third to jump in their seats. "It's some picture of an old house overlooking a cliff."
"Shit, I know that place. That's a few hours drive from here. We should get there before dark." Scott slammed on the brakes and made a quick u-turn and speeded for the other direction.
They all didn't want to say anything, but at least now they all had a new spark of hope left in them. ******************************************************* [Miles away a few hours later on in the day]
Nick awoke grogily from the confines of the dark unconcsiousness. He opened his eyes, slowly the fog of his tranqualizer induced sleep was already receding. He tried to wipe away the dried tears and crusts from his eyes, when he suddenly realized that both his wrists were bound tightly aboce his head. His fingers had already grown numb from the tightness, but he could still feel enough of his wrists to know that the bonds used had cut into his skin and had already caused a bleeding. Nick shook his head of the nagging headache and realized that both his ankles had been tied together as well. He looked down at himself in the semi-darkness of the room and realized that he was dressed in a bright new tux with satin lapels while he hung helplessly on the wall.
His vision finally grew accustomed to the dim lighting, allowing his mind to take in the entire scene.
He was in a relatively good sized room with nothing special except the large heavy and expensive looking curtains on one of the adjacent walls. All the others had tapestries - old and intricrate - hanging behind tall candlelabras that burned brightly giving the room a shimmering luminescence. All the walls were lined with large and small candelabras with candles burning brightly on each holder. He looked around to gaze at any tell tale signs of where he was, but all around the furnitures were covered with soft lacey material that smelled somewhat strangely sweet. Atop of some lace covered tables, stood gothic looking antique candleholders and candlelabras. Across the room there was what seemed to be a relatively large table that stood between the wall where he was tied to and the only door he could see in the room.
His heart was beginning to tremble in fear for his safety. His abductor had apparently taken the time to set up this elaborate setting just for him. He shuddered to think what -- what -- what...then he remembered JOHN! He did this.
It all came back to him in a sudden flood of painful memories amid the throbbing of his headache. He just had a run in with Scott a few days ago in the cemetary by Brandon's grave, and he remembered getting mad at Bryan. Then...then it all happened this morning. John had shown up. He had been so happy to see his old long haired bodyguard. 'But why was he doing this? What did he want from me?!' He cried in his heart, scrambling in his mind for a reason while panic shot through him like an electric current.
His vision suddenly cleared in an instant and he realised what mistake he had made when he had thought the decor of the room to be tapestries. No, the other two walls other than the one with the window was covered with posters, large and small, and pictures of him and Brandon together. What had earlier masked these of intricacies were infact red glistening marks mocking the love he and Brandon had for each other. There were pictures of everything, including the many private moments that he had thought noone else shared other than he and Brandon. He and Brandon and...and John!
"Ah, I see you're finally awake," John stepped through the door. He was suddenly there as though he had read Nick's mind all along. "Good. I was afraid that we weren't going to have the time for dinner." He smiled warmly. "I thought you were going to sleep through the entire night." His voice changed from something warm to somethin cold and bitter.
"John, what --" Nick stopped struggling enough to look at the bodyguard closely. He was dressed similarly in an expensive looking black tux complete with tails over a while shirt and blood red cummerband. John turned to face him just infront of the large lace covered table, and in a flourish, he yanked the lace off revealing a richly laden table. There were exquisite cuisine along the length of the table. Fine crystal glistened like gold under the golden candle light. The rose petals strewn all over the table and around it did not escape Nick's notice at all. It was all shades of his first -- and last -- night with his beloved Brandon.
"Can't you see, Nick? I did this for you -- for us," His last statement was made low with an underlying edge of both love and the agony of it. His face mirrored the emotion that ran through his mind and heart. "In these last five years, I have been so loyal to you. I have watched you grow to become such a beautiful young man, and yet I got nothing from you!" He was beginning to tremble with fury and his breath came in ragged panting. "I loved you, Nick, and I still do. I did everything to make you happy."
John slumped onto one chair with a sigh, his face burried in his large hands. He gestured feebly around him and groaned, "Look around you. Look what I have built for you with my undying love for you and everything you have done. This place is a shrine Nick. A shrine of my love for YOU!" John growled, his face shooting up to meet Nick's. "This old and decaying mansion is a symbol of everything you have become Nick. A beauty of your time and place, but without me, you would become a ruin! Without me, you would have long time been destroyed by everything around you! I gave you my life! My blood! My sweat!
And this is how you repay me?!" He threw a knife so forcefully at the closest picture of Nick and Brandon together that it twanged vibrating as it buried itself into the partially decayed wall.
"John, I -- " Nick was about to give his heartfel apology when the look on John's face when the other looked up stop him dead on his tracks.
"Nick it doesn't matter anymore. None of it does," John snarled, pulling himself up from the chair. "I hope you don't mind that I shaved that ridiculous looking goatie of yours. Honestly Nick, what were you thinking?!" John smiled a predatory grin at Nick, staring him in the eyes like a big dangerous carnivorous cat.
"You're--you're crazy!" Nick stammered only to be cut of by the stinging back hand of John's right paw.
"DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT TO ME AGAIN!" John snarled, then suddenly softened up. "I love you." He gently dabbed at the blood that trickled down the side of Nick's lip with his handkerchief. He smiled again and continued. "You shouldn't say such hurtful things to me, baby. After tonight, we are going to be together forever." He said somberly.. "I made dinner for us."
John added cheerfully with a sickly -- and somewhat dreamy -- smile on his face.
John turned his back to Nick and started to walk towards the table. "Nick, I loved you enough to even put up with that little fool, Brandon...well at least for a while. But the thought of him holding you..." His voice trailed off with a shudder of disgust. "Well, that's all in the past now, isn't it?" There was something in the way he said it that made anger spark deep in Nick's chest.
"Brandon...you?!" Nick forced back the burning of his tears and the tightness in his throat.
"Yes, me. It was I who called your mother that first night with you and Brandon getting together. It was I who warned her of your transgressions. Hell, it was I who hinted to her first of your choice of a lifestyle." John frowned suddenly. "But your mom has always been a stupid bitch. I mean could you believe that she actually thought that she could out smart me?! Hell she threatened me on how I should act around you!" John laughed maniacally. "The stupid bitch didn't even know that I switched her stupid photos of you and your 'friends' with you and Brandon before Brian could get it to those stupid reporters she had following you and that stupid private eye she had spy on me." John laughed again. "She wanted you back with the Backstreet Boys or at least pass your spot over to Aaron." John smiled dolefully at Nick for a second.
"But, I had to eventually take things into my own hands. Did you ever wonder what you could have done to save Brandon, Nick? Huh? Do you ever ask yourself how you could've prevented his death?" John walked back closer to Nick to look at him in the eyes. "Well, it doesnt matter what you think you could've done. It was probably the wrong thing anyways. Although, had you just dumped him earlier -- Nick -- I wouldn't have been forced to take things into my own hands again."
Nick's tears pooled behind his pale blue eyes. His eyes shook with pain and disbelief of what he was hearing. He had always trusted John. Why was he doing this. "You...?"
"Well, not exactly. As you know, I wasn't the one who pulled the trigger." John smiled wildly at Nick. "However, I was the one that goaded his mother up to the brink of insanity though." John laughed out loud.
"She was one piece of work, that woman. She was practically teetering over the edge of sanity anyways.
All I did was give her the gun and the images of you fucking her son, and she snapped." John chuckled deep in his throat. "How was I supposed to know she was going to kill him?" John laughed sarcastically.
Nick spat into his face. Angry at both John and himself. John for what he did, and at him for not seeing it sooner.
"I can understand your anger right now, but you must understand, I was only looking out for you. He was going to ruin you. He and that clutz of a jock brother of his." For a moment John's vision cleared and the warm friend Nick had gotten to know peered out at him wearily, emploring him for something.
"You..." Nick's throat was too tight for words, his tears were already starting to stream down his face.
"I hate you..." Nick cried inbetween sobs.
"Nick...?" There was no fury in John's eyes now, just confusion.
"I HATE YOU!!!" Nick screamed his pain, mourning, and all the betrayal he had endured in his life. He shot it out at John, directed everything painful in his heart and in his memories. He hated John so much this moment that he had thought that it was enough to kill him now.
"Nick, no!" John shot straight, the fire back in his deep swirling black eyes. He wrapped his arms around Nick tightly and ran his fingers through Nick's hair and kneaded his back. "Nick, no, I love you -- YOU love me!" John grunted as he forced a bruising, deep, demanding, and even passionate kiss onto Nick's lips, face and neck. "Nick, I love you." John repeated over and over as he tried to force Nick into his embrace.
There was a sudden commotion in the other room that forced John to leave his current position over Nick.
"You stay here," John snarled as he replaced the gag over Nick's mouth before leaving.
Nick took that opportunity to try and struggle against his bonds again, but just as sudden as the commotion had started earlier, the door burst open spilling out someone that Nick never thought he would see again in his life.
"BRYAN?!" Nick gasped after Brian ripped the gag off of his face.
"No time to explain, but I have to get you out!" Bryan started to tug and work away at the bonds at Nick's wrists. "I brought some help, but your old bodyguard is dangerous..."
"I know, he's crazy."
"I TOLD YOU NEVER TO SAY THAT!" John was suddenly behind Bryan and pulled the smaller man and hurled him towards the adjacent wall with the large windows and the elegant curtains. His tux was ripped, torn, and crumpled with the obvious signs of physical exertion and struggle. He suddenly turned to Bryan, spit now dribbling from his lips in a feral snarl.
"S-stay away from him!" Bryan tried to scramble to his feet in vain. The curtains had been ripped down when he had tried to break his fall, they were now entangled with each other.
"NEVER!" John roared and hurled himself towards Bryan, his hands balled into large wrecking-ball fists.
Nick didn't wait to see the outcome, he took the opportunity to break away from the loosened bonds at his wrists and untangle those at his ankles.
"Enough of this, Nick is mine. Now and for ever!" John growled at the top of his lungs as he raised a large broken chair leg over his head ready to crash down into Bryan's hapless body.
Nick looked up just in time as the last knots were loosed. "NOOOOO!!!!" Nick screamed his defiance and threw all of his weight and body at John, sending the other out balanced, crashing through the glass doors to teeter for a perpetual moment over the edge of the balcony that had gone unstable from disrepair still grasping his makeshift club.
"Nick...." John's voice was suddenly soft again, without any traces of guile or malice. "I love you..." Came his last words squeezed out in a whisper before he finally fell over the over hanging edge of the balcony to go crashing down 50 feet below onto the rocks of the steep cliff.
"John!" Nick came crashing back to reality in an attempt to grab the other before falling. But it was too late. John already disappeared underneath the foam and the surface as Nick looked down over the edge at his one time friend.
"John..." Nick groaned. Again his world was sent crashing down around him. In the last three months, he has lost everything. His love, his life, and his heart.
"Nick...?" Bryan walked carefully beside Nick and pulled him away from the edge. "It's over. He's gone."
"Hey..." Another familiar voice jarred Nick's attention to the door.
"Brian?!" Nick coughed. Not believing his eyes.
"Yeah..." Brian answered feebly, while he was being half carried into the room by two people, only one of whom Nick knew. But even his presence there was a surprise on its own.
"Scott?" Nick stumbled towards the battered trio.
Scott looked at him through tired eyes, holding onto Brian with one strong arm, while cradling the other against his body.
Nick staggered up and ran towards his best friend, limping all along the way, and wrapped his arms tightly around him in a tight warm hug.
"Does this mean I'm forgiven?" Brian joked feebly, grimacing from the slight pain of his bruised ribs.
"Brian, I...I..." Nick caught sight of the other Bryan with his peripheral vision, and he was suddenly bereft of all things to say.
"Nick, comeback with me. Rejoin the Backstreet Boys. We are nothing without you." Brian queried hesitantly.
"No, Brian, you're wrong." Nick sighed and straightened up, wiping his tears away.
"Nick, please..." Brian started.
But Nick put his fingers lightly across Brian's lips and said, "No, Brian, you're wrong. Nick Carter is nothing without the Backstreet Boys." Nick flashed Brian a brilliant smile of old and they hugged like there was no tomorrow. *******************************************************
After a few days of rehabilitation, Brian's and Leighanne's marriage occured without a glitch. Nick was there full of brilliant smiles and genuine kisses for all parties involved. He was by Brian's side as a member of the groom's party to celebrate this momentous occasion. They lived happily in each other's arms.
Jane begged his son for forgiveness. The two are somewhat on a healing route now. She still thinks that there is still hope in changing his mind about his lifestyle. She has plans.
As for Nick, Nick and Bryan started seeing each other. Bryan asked Nick during one date if he was ever going to be able to love again the way he did before. Nick answered told him that up until this moment, he would have said no. But now, he doesn't know anymore. Bryan then kissed Nick lightly on the lips and their date continued happily with each other in their loving embraces. ******************************************************* [Epilogue] A few weeks after the wedding..
The four Backstreet Boys took to the stage for their final song of the evening.
[The Answer to Our Lives began to play on the audio system.]
~~Yeah You see me sitting here A smile upon my face The time has come but you know that it's not too late There's been too many things Together we have seen It's not that hard if we start to believe And we're not gonna take anymore Can we try to erase all the pain So please ~~
Just as they have done in the past few months, Aj took the helm where Nick Carter used to be. They never could find themselves looking for a replacement where the fans were concerned.
~~Show me a reason Give me a sign Tell me the way we Fall outta line Is it today or is it tonight We'll find The answer to our life
(oh yeah) This world is not at ease We seem to hide the truth Thinking there's only so much we really can do It's up to you and me To face our destiny The jury's here so let's take the stand~~
As Aj started to sing once again, a familiar and sweet voice permeated the air. The crowd erupted as the blonde that everyone had missed so much took to the stage once again together with his brothers and friends.
~~And we're not gonna take anymore Can we try (try) to erase all the pain So please
Show me a reason Give me a sign Tell me the way we Fall outta line (fall outta line) Is it today or is it tonight We'll find (we will find) The answer to our life
So tell me why we have to cry And not try When there's so many things we can do To help this troubled (Ooh) World start anew
I need a reason I need a sign There's no turning back I'm here by your side Is it today or maybe tonight We'll find The answer to our life
Show me the way Give me a sign Tell me the way we fall outta line Is it today (is it today) Is it tonight The answer to our life
Show me a reason Give me a sign (give me a sign) Tell me the way we fall (we fall outta line) out of line Is it today (is it today) Or is it tonight (is it tonight) (We will find) The answer to our life (oh)
Show me a reason (oh...) Give me a sign Tell me the way we Fall outta line (don't fall outta line) Is it today or is it tonight (tonight, oh yeah) We'll find, the answer to our life ~~
The crowd erupted once more as the five boys reunited and embraced on stage after almost an entire lifetime of being apart. For now, they were once again together. And this time they knew in their hearts that it will be forever.
'Forever...' A lone dark shadowy man stood amidst the roaring crowd. He too had a glint in his eye. But unlike the others, there was a leviathan of dangerous spark underneath his. 'That is what you told me once, have you forgotten me so soon, Nicky?'
~The End of Book 2~
Watch for Book 3: Promises (Title subject to change) Don't forget to email me and tell me what you think!
John