Chapter 15


I was still in complete shock over what Kevin had said to me. There was no way that I was going to be planning a memorial before I even knew that he was dead! This note gave me new hope on the situation. In a way, I wish Nick had written more about what was happening to him, but he probably didn't have the time to get it out on paper.

Leigh had tried to console me but it didn't help. We had all gathered in a conference room to talk about what we were going to do. When I first got there, I told myself that it wasn't going to cry, but it didn't happen. As I was sitting there, Kevin was talking about plans for a memorial. He said that it would only be the right thing to do. I didn't believe that, I couldn't believe it.

I still felt in my heart that Nick was still very much alive and that he needed our help. Looking around the room, through my tears, I could see that everyone was in a lot of pain. Caitlin was crying so badly that I thought that she was never going to be able to stop. She had told the guys that she had something important to say, probably about her preganacy, I was the only one that knew.

AJ was telling her to relax, I knew that it was impossible because I was in the same position only with Leigh trying to get me to relax. It took a while for Caitlin to calm down. She had stopped crying several times, but every time she began to say anything, she started all over again. This time, I walked over to her and held her hand and told her that it would okay.

"Go ahead," I told her. She looked at me with tears still in her eyes, I looked back at her as if to tell her that she had to do this. Everyone was quiet and waiting for what she had to say. She took a few deep breaths to help her control her crying.

"I'm pregnant," she said with tears once again filling her checks. Everyone in the room was completely heartbroken. Heartbroken in a way that they were happy for her but then hurt, it sounds crazy I know, but it was the feeling in the room and there is no other way to describe it. Leigh had come over to see if she could help Caitlin. We were all beyond help at this point to put it rather simply.

I moved away to let Leigh work her magic. She was at least able to talk at this point. I glanced over at Kevin, he looked so hurt. Finding out about this I think really made him regret doing this right now. He ran his hand through his short hair, but was unable to say anything. He wasn't expecting that, hell none of were. I wasn't when she had originally told me.

"How long have you known?" AJ asked.

"Not long before Nick dissapeared. About two days," she answered.

"Did he know?" Kevin asked.

"No," she said tears still streaming down her face, "I was waiting for a good time to tell him. I was going to tell him the night he was taken, but I wasn't there. It's my fault he's gone, this wouldn't have happened if I had gone up with him like he wanted."

"No, no, no honey," I said to her, "this wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known that this was going to happen. This isn't anyone's fault."

"I could have stopped it Brian," she said looking at me with such pain in her eyes. I'd never seen anyone in this much pain in my entire life.

"No you couldn't have," Howie said, "Brian's right. This isn't anyone's fault."

"Caitlin, look I know how much this hurts because god, I feel it. Nick is my best friend and you know that. I feel just as bad as you do but you have to realize that we couldn't have stopped it. You know that Tailor knew what he was doing if it didn't happen that night, it would have happened another," I said.

"He's right," AJ said softly, "as much as I hate to believe it. He is. We could never have prevented it."

I just looked at him, he had tears coming down his face. He hadn't worn sunglasses today so all of his emotions were completely visable to all of us. It was still hard to believe that AJ had broken down in front of us like this, he never would have done this before. I bet if we find Nick, he'll make us swear to never tell Nick about this. I whiped the tears from my face and looked at Kev.

"You alright over there? You've been pretty quiet," I commented.

"Huh?? Oh yeah I'm fine," he said, "Caitlin you do know that we're all going to be here for you and the baby."

"I know," she managed to whisper after a while. I was snaped out of my stage of sulking when my cell phone rang. I didn't really want to let anyone hear me like this, but if it was officer Davis, I was just going to have to make an acception.

"Hello," I answered, I wasn't succesful in hiding that I was in pian.

"Mr. Littrell this is officer Davis," she said to me, "I'm sorry about not talking to you more last night about what happened, when I went to talk to you, you had left and I figured that you may have needed the time to regroup."

"Yeah, I'm not even half way near regrouping," I told her. Everyone looked at me and I'm sure they wanted to know who I was talking to. I could tell it by the looks on their faces. That and AJ kept asking me who it was. I put my finger to my lips to show him to be quiet, not like I really thought that was going to work.

" I can understand that. Did the letter help you any?"

"Yeah a lot actually," I told her.

"Good," she said, "now getting down to business. We talked to Tailor last night. Actually we just left him. At first he didn't even want to admit that his name wasn't Hudson. After a lot of thinking, we found a way to make him confess about who he was, but I can't talk about that, sorry."

"That's alright," I said not really sure where this was going.

"After that, we knew we had to find out where Mr. Carter was," oh boy I thought, this is the moment of truth.

"Well what do you know?"

"That he's not dead." Suddenly it felt like a huge wait had been lifted off my shoulders. Nick was alright.

"How is he?" I asked. Caitlin looked over at me. The look in her eyes was one that of shock, she knew I meant Nick.

"That's the bad news," she said.

"I don't like the sound of that," I told her.

"I don't blame you. Here's what he told us: he said that Carter is alive. He is pretty badly banged up. He won't tell us where he is so that we can get him so we can help. The only way he says that he's going to tell us is if we..."

"If you what?" I asked getting scared by her pause. I sure as hell knew this wasn't good at all, "if it's money tell him he's got it. We just want Nick back."

"He's alive," I heard Kevin mumble to himself. I nodded to tell him that he was right.

"No, it's not money."

"Than what does he want?"

"Caitlin."

Chapter 16
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