CHAPTER 129

The calls couldn’t have been more timely. Nick was on his way to the airport when he got the first one. Unfortunately, when he answered, he was greeted with silence. After a few seconds, the caller had hung up. Nick’s first thought was that some fans had gotten hold of his cell number. It wouldn’t have been the first time. He mumbled a few expletives under his breath and checked the number, wondering if his message box had been overloaded since last night. Nothing. Maybe it was a wrong number, although it did seem a little familiar.

He turned his cell off when he boarded the plane. It was very early and he just wanted to sleep for a few hours. It would be late afternoon in New York when he arrived. His general plan was to go to the publishing house to pump Tara again and then crash, uninvited, at Hannah’s before heading back to Los Angeles to finish the track they had abandoned yesterday. Then he would go home. By the end of the week, he would be fishing off the Florida Keys. The thought of being with his family with no responsibilities, other than to give his siblings a hard time, made him smile.

He was in a cab, coming into the city when he thought to check his messages again. He scrolled through the short list of numbers that glowed from the small hand-held screen and frowned when the familiar number popped up again. This time, the caller had left a message. It wasn’t a fan after all. Well, it was, but not a random fan. Nick was surprised to discover that the call had come from Tara. She sounded a little odd – almost shy. Almost afraid…. The message was short and sweet:

“Nick? This is Tara. Remember? Well, uh…. I feel a little stupid but..b-but next time you’re in New York, would you mind giving me a call?” There was a pause and then, “Well…okay. Bye.”

Twenty minutes later he was standing in front of her desk.

Tara wasn’t an idiot despite her age and the fact that she had a ‘fan’ crush on Nick Carter. She and Nick had spoken on the phone a couple of times and he had been kind but she knew in her heart of hearts that their relationship – if one could call it that – was not exactly the stuff dreams are made of. He wanted something from her but it wasn’t romance or even sex. Tara wasn’t unattractive but she was no model. She didn’t look like any of the girls she had seen Nick photographed with. In fact, she considered herself pretty ordinary. She worked during the day as a receptionist and took college classes at night because she couldn’t afford to go to school full time. She was practically a non-entity at the publishing house, invisible and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

When she carefully reexamined their first meeting and the few conversations that followed, she strongly suspected that what Nick wanted was information of some sort and that information had to do with company mail. Two days ago, she had discovered something which had made her uneasy. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone for fear of losing her job. She wasn’t sure if she should mention it to Nick. His curiosity may have nothing to do with her discovery. If she could just talk to him…. If he would tell her what he wanted to know and why, she might know what to do. She was taking a late lunch at her desk when her thoughts were interrupted by a vaguely familiar voice.

“Aw, man – I thought I’d take you out…”

Tara almost choked on her chicken salad. She couldn’t believe that Nick was standing there – alone.

“I-I just l-left you a m-message…” she stammered, wiping crumbs from her mouth. “Have you been in New York? I thought I read somewhere that you were recording in California. What are you…”

Nick’s hand flew up as if he were stopping traffic. “Hold up there, girl! I was just coming in from the airport when I got your message. Thought I’d stop by and see what you wanted to talk about – and to see you of course. This was kinda an unplanned trip,” he lied. “Just for a day. I’ll prolly head on back tomorrow morning…”

“Oh…”

Tara’s ‘oh’ hung in the air for several slightly uncomfortable seconds. The time gave Nick a chance to look at her carefully while she shuffled her napkin and paper cup from the desk into a nearby trash can. She was unsettled and while a part of Nick would like to think that it was because of him personally, he suspected that ‘he’ had little to do with her distraction.

“Look,” he said, regathering her attention. “Can we go someplace and talk for a minute? “

Tara’s nervousness caused her response to be a little more sarcastic than she had intended. Part of her wished she had never called him.

“You wanna talk about mail again?” she frowned. “Maybe you’d have more fun in the mail room…”

“I didn’t come to see you to have fun,” Nick spat back.

“Gee, thanks…”

Nick let out a frustrated sigh. He didn’t realize his earlier prying had been so obvious. “That’s not what I meant… We’re sorta friends, right? You called me, remember? Now, can we talk or what?”

Tara’s gaze fell onto Nick’s face. Although she sensed that he was, to a certain degree, using her, she couldn’t resist those wide blue eyes. She knew that they would never have a serious relationship but maybe they could be friends. Maybe she would talk to him. After all, what did she have to lose – besides her livelihood and possible college degree which might lead to a real job with a real future for a good career and the opportunity to meet influential people, one of whom she might fall in love with and marry one day…. Tara pushed out a defeated breath.

“Let me get Linda to cover the desk. Then we can talk…”

Tara returned to her desk an hour later. Two hours after that, the office was virtually empty except for her – and Nick, who had been waiting in an empty conference room.

*****

“God – just hurry up!” Tara whispered franticly. “I don’t know why you want to look around anyway! I told you all there was to tell. There’s nothing in here!”

Nick didn’t even turn around. “You don’t know that. There might be. You just hang by the door and knock if anyone comes.”

“What good will that do? By the time somebody comes, it’ll be too late!”

“Just give me minute, Tara. I’ve hidden enough stuff in my day to know where to look – and I’ve found shit of my brother’s and sister’s. too.”

“Just hurry the hell up! I need this job, shitty as it is!”

When the door closed, Nick resumed his search. The fact was that Tara wasn’t the only one who could get into major trouble. He could get charged with trespassing or breaking and entering… Well, entering, maybe. I ain’t broke nothin’… He wasn’t sure where to begin. There didn’t seem to be an obvious starting point and it was entirely possible that he was barking up a very wrong tree. Tara’s little discovery might have meant nothing. In fact, the way Tara told it, it was a giant twist of fate that led to her see what she did.

Two nights ago, she had stayed late at the office. She was going to meet some college friends for dinner and then they would go to class together. She wouldn’t have time to go home and then return for dinner, so she had elected to stay at work and catch up on some reading for class. She had been doing this every Tuesday night for several weeks. The office was quiet, except for the cleaning people, and she had found that she could get quite a bit accomplished.

On this particular night, she had knocked over a cup of coffee. Fortunately, there had been very little left in the cup, but it was still a mess that would require a little clean up. Birdie, the woman who cleaned this floor, had already cleaned up Tara’s desk and emptied her trash. In fact her cleaning cart was just a few steps away, so Tara went to it and grabbed some paper towels and cleaning spray, fuming at her own clumsiness and hoping that the coffee wouldn’t stain her new blouse. When everything had been wiped up, she took the spray bottle back to Birdie’s cart, as well as the damp wad of paper toweling. Birdie had a big trash bag attached to the handle of her cart and since she had already emptied Tara’s can, Tara thought that the least she could do was to keep it empty – at least until morning.

She didn’t know what made her look into the plastic trash bag before she dropped the towel inside. All she knew was that she glanced into the half-filled bag and saw something that caught her attention. Laying to one side of several wadded sheets of paper were several clippings from various newspapers and magazines, as well as some papers that looked as if they had been downloaded from a website and printed out. None of these pages were complete. The only thing they had in common was that they all had pictures printed on them – pictures of Kevin Richardson.

Tara glanced down the hallway. She could hear Birdie humming in a distant office. Taking a breath, she reached her hand into the bag and dug a little through cigarette butts and Styrofoam cups before snagging a handful of the curious pages. Tara recognized some of the pictures as coming from websites she had recently visited herself. The difference was that these pictures were incomplete. Kevin was in all of the pictures, but Connie O’Rourke had been with him in the originals. Now, Kevin’s likeness lay in the trash and Tara had to wonder what had happened to the images of Miss O’Rourke.

She hadn’t really wondered too much about Nick’s mail obsession until then but the fact was that someone had kept Connie’s pictures and she was reminded of Nick’s casual questions and comments. Now, she doubted that they were casual at all. Tara knew what office the pictures had come from because they were top of the trash pile and she had spoken to Birdie when she left the newly cleaned room.

It was probably nothing. Connie O’Rourke did work for Plymouth afterall… Still, it seemed a little strange. Why cut her away from the picture? And those pictures hadn’t been evidenced around the publishing house like pictures of other employees who had made the news and soon found themselves up on bulletin boards.

The mail was another question and one that she had not considered until she found the clippings of Kevin in the trashbag. Part of her job as a receptionist was to also be an office gopher. It was not uncommon for Tara to stick her head into open offices and offer to run for coffee or pick up outgoing mail. It gave secretaries a break from some of the more menial tasks and gave her a chance to - hopefully - become a little indispensable. The offers were usually appreciated but there was one person who seemed very put out by her innocent offer. He didn’t mind her running for soda or coffee but his mail was definitely off limits. This was the same person whose office had just been cleaned by Birdie. The same person who had been cutting out pictures – apparently not of Kevin Richardson, because they were trashed – but of Connie O’ Rourke.

That person was the publisher himself, Stephen Sullivan.

Chapter 130

There was a part of Nick that almost hoped he wouldn’t find anything. When he an AJ made up their ‘possibility’ list, Stephen Sullivan wasn’t even on it. He was Connie’s boss, for Christ’s sake. While that didn’t preclude him from being an asshole, it just seemed so unlikely given Connie’s respect for the man – not to mention her gratitude.

It just didn’t make sense to anyone who thought in a logical manner. Nick had no doubt that Connie, Kevin, Brian and even AJ would either be laughing or screaming their respective asses off if they could see him snooping around right now. Fortunately for Nick – or perhaps unfortunately – he wasn’t exactly the poster boy for ‘Logic’.

After several minutes alone in Stephen’s office, even he began to feel a little foolish. Taking a seat at a massive mahogany desk, he tried to gather his thoughts. Nick’s eyes fell on a picture of a woman and young boy that was framed in brass. The picture had been signed All our love, Fran and Sean… The narrow drawer at the front of the desk was locked but he was surprised to find that the other four were not. Nick glanced at the door and then opened them slowly before rifling through their contents, being careful to replace things as he had found them. The contents of the first three drawers were as dull as he had expected them to be – address books, company directories, computer manuals, tape and so on, but he found the fourth drawer much more interesting. Beneath a small stack of publications with titles like ‘Bibliophile’ and ‘The New York Times Book Review’, he found two sheets of printed computer labels – all with Connie’s name on them along with the address of the house Kevin had recently purchased. In the back of the drawer was a box of plain, white, business envelopes. Bingo…..maybe…..

Even Nick knew that this wasn’t much evidence – certainly not enough to take to Kevin. Printing out a sheet of address labels to have ready to stick on an envelope wasn’t exactly uncommon. His own business manager did that. Even his mother did it. Hell, it even sounded like something Kevin would do…. But this just felt different. Nick was starting to get a headache. A couple of pages of labels could be easily explained – but…..Why wouldn’t he just get a secretary to do this letter stuff? Why even write letters? Connie has emails from him almost every damn day…. Why plain envelopes and not company ones? And where in the hell are the pictures?

Frustrated, Nick pushed the chair away from Stephen’s desk where it rolled a bit before crashing into a credenza that was against the wall behind him. The collision caused a small statue, which was serving as a book end, to topple which, in turn caused several books and a couple of cameras to fall. Hastily, Nick sought to correct the mishap. Righting the books, he noticed that one was an album of some sort. It was very nice, bound in a soft tan leather. Nick opened it and found pages of photographs and clippings, all having to do with the publishing house and its employees. There was no mention of Connie anywhere.

Finally, giving up any hope of finding real evidence that would connect Sullivan and the anonymous letter writer, Nick took one more look around. That’s when fate smiled. The furniture in Stephens office mainly consisted of four things: his desk, some chairs, the credenza and walls of book cases. As his eyes ran across shelf upon shelf of multicolored volumes, mostly hardback, a familiar book grabbed his attention. It was on a lower shelf, mixed with items of a similar color. Nick would probably never have noticed the volume except for the fact that he had just looked through one that was very similar – the album bound in tan leather.

This album was almost identical to the one he had looked at earlier except that this one seemed to be reserved for one subject only, and that subject was Constance Kendall O’Rourke. As Nick flipped through the pages, he became aware that the pictures, clippings and print-outs seemed to be divided into sections, with empty pages separating them. The first section contained photographs and clippings of Connie in professional surroundings – group shots at the office, pictures of her with other people, maybe authors, group shots, etc. The next section contained candid photgraphs. Some were even prints of those Hannah had taken in Clearwater. There were shots of Connie at parties and some that had been cropped. Nick guess that some of these were pictures taken of her and Kevin together and that Stephen had simply cut Kevin out of the shot.

The section at the back of the book, however, is the one that convinced Nick that Stephen was the likely culprit in this campaign to break Kevin and Connie apart. Here were the pictures that one might consider sexy or titillating. There were more shots of Connie in Clearwater – including several of Connie at that party in Clearwater where Kevin had gotten bombed and he and Connie had had a fight. These were all bikini shots, many of which looked like they had been cut from larger prints. There were pictures from behind of Connie bending over a desk. There was a shot of her on the street, innocent but suggestive, licking an ice cream cone and a picture taken at some kind of cook-out where she was bending to talk to a small child. The lens had locked onto her cleavage. There were pictures of her apartment, of her bed. Then there was a shot of her outside, wearing a straight skirt and fitted sweater. Next to this picture was a larger one of the same shot but this one had been blown up from the original and cropped so that all was visible were her wool-covered breasts. The outline of her hardened nipples could be seen through the sweater.

A feeling of disgust washed over Nick. He was no angel but there was something a little sick and scary about these pages. He felt like a voyeur. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about these shots were the smears that dotted some of the images. He was a guy and he knew that guys often jacked off while looking at pictures of women or girlie magazines. Men usually liked a visual stimulus. Judging from the stains and smears he saw, he had no doubt that Stephen had used these pictures in the same way. He felt an irrepressible need to wash his hands.

Nick stood in Stephen’s private washroom, drying his hands and wondering what he should do now. Kevin needed to know about this. The letters would never end until Sullivan was cornered and there was no way that Nick could keep this information to himself. He only knew of one thing to do and that was to steal the album and a sheet of labels and take them to Kevin. After that, it would be out of his hands. And Kevin will be so surprised and proud and grateful, even if I did steal something…

He picked up the album and reopened Stephen’s desk drawer, grabbing a sheet of labels, before leaving the office and closing the door behind him. Tara was almost beside herself.

“Shit! Somebody’s coming up on the elevator! I was about to come pull you out of there!”

“Okay, okay! I’m out, alright? Chill…”

“What the hell do you have there?” Tara frowned, trying to see what Nick was holding behind his back. “Did you take something?”

“I had, to…”

His explanation was interrupted by the ping of the elevator bell. When the doors opened a lone man stood in the cubicle. Although Nick didn’t recognize him, Tara obviously did. Before he could open his mouth, she had sidestepped behind Nick, grabbed the leather album and stepped again over to the side of the reception desk, jamming the book into a canvas tote that contained her textbooks and papers. It’s spine was higher than those of her other books but it didn’t look out of place with her things which included folders and notebooks.

Nick looked a little dazed and confused. His bounty had been snatched from his hands before he knew what had happened. He was about to protest when the reason for Tara’s actions became abundantly clear.

“Well, hello, Mr. Sullivan! What are you doing back here? Did you forget something?”

Nick suddenly felt a little sick to his stomach. If he had spent another two minutes in that office, he would have been busted – probably in more ways than one.

“I might ask you the same thing, Tina…”

“It’s Tara, sir…” She swallowed. Mr. Sullivan didn’t look too happy and now he was staring at Nick.

“Whatever,” Stephen said dismissively. “Why are you still here?”

“I have a class tonight, sir, and I thought I’d just stay here in the quiet and study a little before I have to go to school.”

“And this is your tutor?” Stephen asked with a strong hint of sarcasm as he pointed to the big blond.

Tara’s eyes bounced back and forth between the two men. “Oh – no, I’m sorry! This is Nick Car…”

“I know who he is,” Stephen interrupted. “We did a book about the Backstreet Boys, remember?” He gave Nick a pointed once-over before adding his subtle slam and then he spoke again, as if Nick wasn’t even in the room. “Plymouth seems to attract them like a magnet.” He received no verbal response but he did note that Carter’s eyes had narrowed considerably. “Yes, first that boy with the goatee and now, the blond…”

Nick could contain himself no longer. “Kevin is hardly a ‘boy’, Mr. Sullivan…”

“He’s hardly a ‘man’, either – from what I understand,” Stephen cooed back.

Tara watched as Nick’s entire body tensed and he took a step forward. She had to get him out of there. Nick was angry but he would be no match for Stephen Sullivan’s verbal barbs and she could easily envision Nick pushing a fist into Stephen’s patronizing mouth. If that happened, all hell would break loose.

“C’mon Nick, I’ll be late,” Tara blurted, grabbing Nick’s fisted hand and pulling him towards the elevator.

Nick kept his eye’s locked on Stephen’s. Tara knew that the older and younger man were engaged in some sort of testosterone induced battle of wills but she also knew that, not only would no one win this skirmish, but that Nick could lose whatever advantage he might have discovered in Stephen’s office. As a last ditch attempt to escape, she threw her sweater over the top of her tote bag and gave Nick a mighty shove.

“’Night, Mr. Sullivan…”

Stephen didn’t reply but watched as the couple boarded the elevator and turned to face the front. Nick was still staring at him and just as the elevator closed he saw Nick scratch his eyebrow. With one finger. His middle finger. The other fingers were folded. It was too late to respond to Nick’s one-fingered salute. That little prick just shot me the bird…

Stephen was fuming but he was about to erupt into a real furor. He stepped into his office and a feeling of unease washed over him. Something wasn’t right. The light was on, for one thing. Birdie probably forgot to turn it off when she was in here… But there was something else. The statue on his credenza was turned around and his books had been jostled. Stephen quickly opened his fourth desk drawer. It didn’t take him long to discover that a page of his labels was missing – at least he thought they were missing. Maybe he had only printed one page? He turned slowly to his bookshelves and ran his eyes over the volumes that rested on a lower shelf. It’s gone….

“FUCKING COCKSUCKER!”

Stephen was apoplectic. The Backdoor Shit had taken his album. He tried to convince himself that the pictures were not proof of anything but panic had already begun to fill his mind. Unless Nick Carter also had a grand attraction to Connie, he must be planning to take the album to Kevin – or worse – to Connie, herself. Stephen turned to the framed portrait of Fran and Sean.

Shit….What do I do now?