And The Plot Thickens

"Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le compliqué.
(The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route.)"
~George Sand.

FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.

"Look, you don't have to physically put the list in our hands," Kate Callahan held out an empty palm for emphasis. "We're just asking for a second opinion—just forward the evidence to an analyst of our choice."

Dawson's face scrunched in slight disapproval. "And how will we know that this isn't just somebody who's willing to say whatever you want to hear? Then we've got two supposed experts in direct opposition."

"At which point, you can send it to a third," Callahan countered, though her tone and stance remained non-combative. Dawson might be resisting her suggestion, but she'd gotten a good read on him by now—she could tell his opposition was mainly for show, and nothing in his tone or body language implied that he was really planning to deny her request.

O'Donnell remained silent, his brown eyes focused intently on Dawson. He had the power to override Dawson's decision, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. Agent Callahan made a compelling and logical argument—having a second, or even a third, opinion certainly wouldn't hurt. If nothing else, it would strengthen the evidence's veracity.

He had to think like a prosecutor now. Every piece of evidence needed to be vetted and re-vetted, to prove that it could stand up in court. The more confirmation they got, the less chance a defense attorney would have of getting a particular piece of evidence thrown out, or misconstrued in a doubtful light.

Yes, he still chafed at the idea of Dr. Reid being a terrorist, but he had to put personal feelings aside and look at the job as a whole. It wasn't easy, but he hadn't been appointed Special Agent in Charge just so he could make simple, easy decisions. It came with the territory.

Agent Hotchner re-entered the room, joining them with a brief glance around, as if silently gauging everyone's current moods. During the briefing, he'd asked if there was any other evidence against Dr. Reid, and although Dawson hadn't answered outright, there had been the distinct impression that there wasn't.

Dawson looked at Hotchner, his face as impassive as his tone, "Agent Callahan wants us to release the evidence into your custody."

"Only for a second opinion on the handwriting analysis," Callahan reiterated—for Dawson's benefit, not Hotch's. After all, Hotch was the one who'd instructed her to make the request, before he'd disappeared to make a phone call. "And we only need a copy."

"Copy's not as good as the original," Dawson reminded her. "So I'll give you the real deal. But you'll have to wait—our guy's not done with his analysis yet."

"He's not?" Callahan's eyes widened. "So there's still a chance that he could prove it's a forgery?"

"Jesus. You people never give up, do you?" Dawson's tone with tinged with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

"No, sir. It's not in our nature." With a smirk, Kate added, "Being bull-headed is actually a BAU requirement."

There was actually a flash of smile on Aaron Hotchner's lips, but he ducked his head slightly and the smile disappeared.

It was meant as a joke, but it held some truth—the only way you survived this job was by never giving up.

The Old Donovan House. Brookmont, Maryland. (7 miles north of D.C.)

"Good grief, Rossi, you don't give up, do ya?" Emily Prentiss rolled her eyes in mainly-feigned irritation. Honestly, she'd expected a total interrogation from her former colleague about the current status of her relationship with Aaron Hotchner. Rossi had been the one who'd finally pushed the two together, and she knew that he had an emotional investment in their mutual happiness.

It was sweet, but also hella annoying.

"I don't need nitty-gritty details," Rossi held up his hands in self-defense as he walked around the front of his car, joining Emily on the sidewalk. They'd just arrived at the address that Penelope Garcia had found for Lydmilla Donovan, Linnea's deceased grandmother. Linnea's husband had informed Karl (who'd told Jordan, who'd then told Rossi) that Linnea often went to her grandmother's old house to "get away" whenever she was working on a big project. It was a mad-ditch effort, but one worth following through.

"Good, because you aren't getting any," Emily dryly informed him.

"I just want to know how you two are going to handle the next few days—I mean, you're both here, you're both…available."

"Available?"

"You know what I mean, gattina. Beth's been long gone, and Hotch hasn't even looked at another woman since then—although I've always held the sneaking suspicion that's because he's only got eyes for a certain Interpol chief—"

"You really should stop writing nonfiction and go into tawdry romance series," she rolled her eyes again (a sure sign that she was flustered, Rossi noted—when feeling uneasy, Emily always amped up the sarcasm). "Look, we have an agreement of sorts, OK? We're not waiting around for each other. We're just…we're…whatever we are."

"And what about you? Have you been…not waiting?"

"Rossi, I love you, I really do. But I am so not discussing my sex life with you. The very thought makes me throw up a little bit."

He laughed heartily at this, the way a father would at the gleeful realization that he's embarrassed his teenage daughter.

"So, this is the house," Emily nodded towards the house in question, more out of a desire to change the subject than an actual belief that Rossi didn't know which house they were looking for.

"No car in the driveway," Rossi noted as they strolled up the front walk.

"Could be in the garage," Emily motioned towards the back of the house.

"Could be out grabbing a late lunch." Rossi shrugged.

They reached the front door, and Emily stepped back, "You should handle this part, Mr. FBI Agent."

He leaned forward and rang the doorbell. After a second try, he resorted to knocking rather forcefully on the door.

No response.

Emily floated away, craning her neck to peek inside the windows. "House is dark. Doesn't really look like anyone's been here in a while."

"Maybe we should take a look inside, just to be sure," Rossi suggested innocently. Emily stopped and stared at him, fully understanding his meaning.

And now she also understood why Hotch had assigned her to this task—as an Interpol agent, she had a certain amount of immunity, particularly when it came to crimes of a petty nature, such as…breaking and entering.

"My, I think I hear sounds of distress," she cocked her head to the side, feigning concern. "They sound as if they're coming from inside."

"You know, I think I hear them, too," Rossi played along.

"We should probably rush to the rescue—but maybe from a back door," Emily moved around the edge of the house.

"Sounds like a solid plan, Chief Prentiss," Rossi was right behind her.

The back door was much easier to open (with the help of a screwdriver found in the garage). Rossi kept watch while Emily huffed and puffed and swore at the door knob, giving a small noise of triumph whenever she finally did meet with success.

"See? Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy," she was still slightly breathless, gesturing towards the now-open door with a flourish.

"You've really been around the Brits too long," Rossi informed her. She gave a light laugh in response.

"Is that another attempt to get me to move back home?"

"Not exactly. But maybe you should think about the fact that, of all the places you've lived in your life, this is the place you refer to as home." He entered the house with a studied nonchalance.

"Dammit, Rossi. You really don't give up, do you?"

"Not on you, gattina. Never on you."

She tried to remain irritated, but she couldn't stop the grin blooming across her face. That was David Rossi's saving grace—he always knew exactly when to be sweet and honest, when to step back over the line to safety.

They checked the kitchen—the fridge was empty, the countertops cleared but already sporting a light layer of dust.

"No one's been here for a while," Emily noted, making her way into the dining room. The area was clean, but with the distinct feeling of being unlived in. "There's no way that Linnea's been holed up in here for the past however-many hours."

"She was never here at all," Rossi agreed, looking around cautiously as he entered the living room. Still, they finished searching the house, each room only confirming their suspicions.

"So, what does this mean?" Emily set her hands on her hips. "Is Linnea lying to her husband about where she is? Or is she missing and someone's using her phone to pretend to be her?"

"Given the circumstances, I think we're gonna have to assume it's the second option." Rossi gave a heavy sigh. "Just when you think the day can't get any longer, gattina."

"I know," her voice was heavy with empathy. "Trust me, I know."

Evidence Lab, FBI Main Building. Quantico, Virginia.

It was moments like these that always made Jeff Masterson want to laugh at those hyped-up crime dramas, the ones that portrayed evidence labs as places pulsing with action and constant discovery. They gave one the sense that evidence was analyzed in the blink of an eye, that test results were instantaneous, that any killer could be caught in forty-three minutes or less.

Granted, very few people would watch an episode of real life in the evidence lab—this episode being a perfect case-in-point. He and Roe were seated side-by-side once more, reading through those damned notebooks. Roe had made herself comfortable—slouched back in her hard plastic chair, knees tucked into her chest as both feet pushed against the edge of the heavy metal table, her chair balancing on its two back legs as she gently rocked back and forth. She looked like an accident waiting to happen, which honestly was a solid metaphor for her entire life. For some reason, this only made Jeff love her more.

As a child, Jeff's mother had affectionately called him Saint Jude. It wasn't until he was a teen that he'd truly understood why—Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes and impossible cases. He was always bringing home injured birds or stray dogs or sneaking out food for the neighborhood alley cats. He collected shattered mirror shards and eggshells from robins' nests—as his wife later put it, he understood the beauty of broken things.

It was little wonder that he'd become Rowena Lewis' friend so quickly. After years of surrounding himself with broken and injured creatures, he'd learned to spot one from a mile away. And despite her solid defense system, Rowena was definitely wounded. He saw it in her eyes, when she thought no one else was looking.

By that point in his life, he'd experienced enough disasters to know that he couldn't fix anyone. And instinctively, he'd known that Roe was strong enough to fix herself, if given the right amount of support and the right tools. The more he'd learned about her, the more he'd realized that she'd already done so much in terms of healing her own wounds, and he'd admired her all the more for surviving the hellacious childhood that she'd been given.

So he'd done the only thing that he could—he'd been her friend, he'd stuck by her side, quietly reminding her that not all people were bad, that not every person who liked her only wanted her body, that she had merit and worth simply by virtue of her self. In return, she'd reminded him that he was a good person as well, and she'd returned his friendship and loyalty with equal force.

Of course, when those feelings get tangled up, complications can arise. Jeff Masterson could honestly say that he loved Rowena Lewis, but he'd been careful to keep that love away from romantic intentions. First and most importantly, because he had a wife, whom he loved very much. Second, because if he did allow himself to devolve into such feelings, it would only prove to Rowena that she could only be seen in terms of attraction and desire—the very thing he'd tried so hard to prove false.

Someday, another man would see past the defenses, and see what he saw in her—not a beautiful catastrophe, not some tragic heroine, not some damsel to be rescued or some siren to be claimed, but a warrior, a woman who hadn't walked through fire but who'd become the fire, overlaid with humor and spark and wit. He wished it for her, almost more than he wished for anything else.

Currently, the benefactor of his well wishes was wearing a slightly amused smile as she read something in the journal.

"Listen to this," she commanded, stretching her legs out so that she tilted further back in her chair (jesus, she was dangerously close to toppling over backwards). "The night is dark, but for the stars. And stars must explode and burn to be created—good grief, this guy was bat-shit."

"Wait," Jeff stood up, looking around suddenly. "Read that again."

"Swept away by the sheer prose of it all?"

"Just…read it again, Roe."

She noticed the strangeness in his tone, because she folded her knees in again, the front legs of her chair coming to rest on the floor for the first time in half an hour. Her sharp brows quirked into an expression of confusion, but she did as he asked. "The night is dark but for the stars."

Jeff was rummaging around on the table top, opening a notebook and leafing through it.

Rowena continued. "And stars must explode and burn to be created. It is a fact of our Universe. There can be no light—"

"Without the cleansing power of combustion and recreation," Jeff finished, reading from the notebook in his hands.

Now Rowena was on her feet, craning her neck to inspect his journal, her hazel eyes darting back and forth between his notebook and her own.

"Holy shit, these are the exact same," she breathed.

"We need to go back and look at this from an entirely new angle," Jeff was practically sprinting across the room now, taking the remaining stacks of notebooks from their plastic container.

"What're you doing?" Roe was at his side in a flash.

"Count the number of journals we found hidden in the books." He directed, and she shifted further down the countertop, popping the lid off a plastic evidence bin and doing as he instructed. Silence reigned for several heart-pounding minutes.

"I have twenty-seven," she informed him. She nodded back towards the table, "That's including the one I've already read, and the one I'm currently reading."

"I only have eighteen." He looked down at the evidence bin containing the rest of the notebooks from Fuller's desk drawer.

"So it's not a one-to-one match," Roe pointed out.

"Maybe it was, originally," Jeff mused. "We thought the killer didn't take any of the journals—but what if he did? What if he took the ones that had way too much information?"

Roe took a full beat to merely stare at him. Then she stepped back, grabbing an evidence bin and moving it to their table. "We need to find all the ones that match up—and figure out what's in the ones that don't have a partner."

He nodded in agreement.

"But why have two copies?" Roe wondered aloud, setting the notebook that she'd been reading next to the one that Jeff had read from as well, lining up the pair. They didn't have much table space, so she shook her head and stacked them together, placing them at the edge of the table.

"First rule of data entry—always have a backup copy," Jeff reminded her, somewhat distracted as he sifted through the notebooks in his bin. "I'll read aloud from the first page of a notebook, and you search through yours to find the match. We'll pair 'em up and then see where that gets us."

"Aye, chief," she gave a curt nod of agreement.

"You know, Agent Lewis, I think we've just made what might be classified as a breakthrough."

"You know, Agent Masterson, I think you just might be right."

Madison, Wisconsin.

As they were leaving the restaurant, Emma easily linked arms with her mother, gently taunting, "You can't hide the truth forever, Mom. Eventually, you're gonna have to let us meet him."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, that is leaps and bounds beyond wherever we might be at this particular moment—at this point, it's not even a remote possibility," Mac held her hands up, attempting to stop her daughter's train of thought. "You and your aunt are getting way too ahead of yourselves—as I have stated countless times now, it's really not a big deal. It's not even a deal at all, really."

"So you said this man was working on the bombing case with you," Joanie had caught up to them—she'd hung back for a few moments, fidgeting with her vaporizer. She'd given up smoking five years ago in favor of vaping, but her nicotine addiction remained as strong as ever. She let out a long stream of smoke. "So he's an agent at Quantico, correct?"

Mac didn't answer, and Joan took that as an affirmation.

"You know, I know a guy who works at Quantico. I should hit him up, see if he can figure out who your mystery man is," Joan was on her phone now.

"Joan Elizabeth Macaraeg Beringer, don't you dare."

"Oh, you know I'm joking—and even if I wasn't, David Rossi wouldn't tell anyone."

Thank God above that Mac was wearing her sunglasses, because she was pretty sure that her eyes were the size of saucers.

"Who?"

"David Rossi. He's the guy I know who works at Quantico. He's a profiler. We met a couple of years ago—we were both on book tours, and this little place in Boston rounded up a bunch of us crime writers and put us together for a panel." Joan was oblivious to her sister's shock. "You'd like him a lot, actually. He's an absolute devil, but a real sweetheart underneath."

Mac tried to control her thrumming pulse. She needed to say something, but what could she say that wouldn't give it all away?

"He's kind of a big deal in the Bureau," she admitted cautiously. "I'm surprised you never mentioned meeting him."

Her elder sister waved away the thought, "Well, I didn't know he was a big deal—and besides, I meet dozens of people, all the time. I don't tell you about every single one. Dave and I have crossed paths a few times, but there never was much to report."

Mac suddenly wanted to ask if Rossi had ever flirted with her—but doing so would be a dead-giveaway.

Thankfully, Joan shifted gears, lightly patting her sister's arm as she took another drag on her vaporizer. In the odd tone that can only be made by someone holding their breath while talking, she added, "Keep your secrets, Addie. So long as they're happy ones."

She finally released the vapor from her lungs, the smoke billowing and curling in the early afternoon chill.

"Aunt Joanie speaks solely for herself," Emma informed her. "I'm not going to give up so easily. Consider it payback for all your nosiness over the boys I date."

Mac laughed at the comparison—truly, she couldn't deny that she was a bit overprotective when it came to whom her daughter dated.

"Deal. But just know, right now, that you're not gonna find anything. I've been playing this game a lot longer than you have, girlie."

Emma grinned. "Challenge accepted."

Adelaide Macaraeg was grinning as well. But it didn't stop the tremor in her stomach at the thought that this was already becoming more tangled than she could have hoped. All of this, over a simple act of kindness, and a simple little kiss!

FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.

Sura Roza nearly jumped out of her chair like a puppet on a string whenever Jack Dawson entered the room.

"Y'alright there?" He drawled in slight amusement.

"Sorry, I was just…I took one of those triple-shot espresso energy drink thingies and now I'm jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

He merely shook his head at the analogy. After all these years, he was used to Sura and her odd comparisons. He quickly returned to the purpose of his visit, "Last night, when we were talking about the remote access program—you mentioned that there would be signs…low battery life, that sort of thing."

Sura gave a small nod of agreement.

"You can track that kind of thing, can't you?" Dawson held out his hands in a gesture of uncertainty.

"Battery life, no. But," Sura's green eyes flicked to the ceiling, the wheels in her brain turning. "You can track data usage. In fact, most carriers will show you a basic overview of your usage stats on every bill."

She suddenly understood his questioning, "Oh. Ohhh. I can get his cell phone's data usage stats and see if there was a spike in usage over the past few weeks—"

"Make it months. Something like this took planning—go back as far as two years, if you can."

"Two years?" Sura looked slightly incredulous.

Dawson gave a curt nod. "And if you don't have enough on your plate, I need you to look at Fuller's and Reid's financials for the past few months, side by side. Coworkers can't place them together, so maybe money will—look for anything that could place them in the same location. Credit card charges at the same coffee shop, the same restaurant, or maybe they both spent money at the same bookstore."

Sura puffed out her cheeks in an expression of uneasy disagreement. "You're not gonna find anything like that, my darling. I've already checked out Fuller's financials—they're clean."

"But you haven't compared them to Spencer Reid's, have you?"

She shook her head, "No, you're not understanding—I'm saying it won't matter. Benjamin Fuller had no credit cards, just a debit card that he used to withdraw cash from an ATM. All of his utilities were automatically drafted from his account, and his paycheck was on direct deposit. Aside from his auto-payments, everything else must have been paid for in cash."

Dawson frowned. "That's making an effort, in this day and age. Has he always been this way?"

Sura made a small hum of uncertainty as she clicked through several windows on her computer. After a few minutes, she found what she was looking for, squinting slightly as she went back through the information. "Ah, no. Seems like he used to use his debit card for other purchases."

"So when did he stop and go purely cash-only?"

"Um…2012. No, 2013."

Dawson swore under his breath.

"What is it?" Sura sat up straighter, her face lined with confusion and curiosity.

"John Curtis was still alive then."

Evidence Lab, FBI Main Building. Quantico, Virginia.

Rowena Lewis and Jeff Masterson stood side by side, hands on their hips as they looked down at their progress—they'd matched up the eighteen notebooks from Fuller's desk drawer with their copies which had been hidden in the bookshelf. Now came the task of deciding how to proceed.

"So, do we see what the nine without mates contain, or do we read the pairs in tandem to see what was taken out?" Roe asked, her eyes still focused on the rows of notebooks on the table before them.

"Which would be faster?" Jeff wondered aloud. Roe understood his reasoning—knock out the faster task first, allowing them to have at least one thing marked off the to-do list by the end of the day.

"Comparing the pairs, I think. We just have to skim until we get to a part where the desk copy is missing a page, and see what the bookshelf copy has to say."

Her partner gave a slow nod of agreement. "Let's do it."

She grabbed a pair of notebooks from the edge of the table, handing Jeff the copy from the desk drawer, in keeping with their original working model where he read notebooks from the desk and she read the ones from the bookshelf.

They settled back into their seats and began flipping from page to page. Roe read the first few lines aloud, and Jeff would confirm that he also had that page. It didn't take long for them to reach a point at which Jeff's notebook had a missing page.

"Let's see what deep and dark secrets are held here," Roe announced, her eyes skimming over the contents. "A mention of the doctor…and the mysterious she…that's it."

"Alright," Jeff jotted down a few notes on a legal pad. They'd decided to keep track of every mention of another person in the journals.

Several pages later, Jeff's journal had another missing page.

"More mentions of the unknown female," Roe informed him. "Plus one mention of Reid."

"Got it." Jeff scribbled it onto the legal pad before returning his attention to the notebook in his hand. "You know, I don't think I ever read a reference to anyone else in the journals I read—not she, not the doctor, not Reid."

"If the killer removed the pages, and if Reid were the killer—why remove references to his female accomplice as well?" Roe looked up, her face filled with an odd mix of confusion and anticipation. She was on the edge of something, they both could feel it.

"You think that maybe whoever this she is, she's the killer?" Jeff asked quietly.

"I think there's a fifty-fifty chance, at this point."

"Which begs the more important question: who is she?"

October 2012. Georgetown University. Washington, D.C.

Benjamin Fuller couldn't believe it. He was finally meeting her.

Dr. Maura Morrow. Forensic document analyst and renowned handwriting expert. Consultant on the Amerithrax letters. The burning angel from the press conference.

For the past ten years, she'd been little less than a recluse, no longer taking interviews or publishing books, keeping a low profile even in the academic community where she still held her footing as a respected researcher. However, she'd finally come out of her seclusion to publish her latest book, Shadows in Ink, which covered her recent endeavors to verify the authenticity of a supposed lost play by Christopher Marlowe, as well as her work determining the authenticity of other Elizabethan documents granting land to several families throughout England.

Benjamin had always been fascinated by the art of handwriting analysis, but if he were honest, he'd have to admit that his main fascination was Dr. Morrow herself. Even now, a decade later, he couldn't explain how or why she'd captured his imagination, or why he'd followed her career ceaselessly since that fateful day that he saw her on the television. She just…spoke to him. Her anger and frustration in that single moment had mirrored his own feelings about the outcome of the Amerithrax case, and her beauty had only added to his desire to feel some kind of connection.

She looked like the kind of woman that only existed in myth—the Valkyries of old, Pallas Athena, Nike, any other fearless warrior. Her hair was even lighter than it was ten years ago, a platinum blonde with almost silvery notes, with seemed to only accent the slate hue of her wary eyes. Her nose was thin, petite in size yet hawkish in build, sitting above a rosebud mouth that seemed perpetually pursed in mild disapproval of the world around her.

She could have caught the person responsible for the Amerithrax letters, if only they'd given her more time, more leeway. He knew it, as deeply as he knew anything.

He also knew better than to say such a thing, when he finally got his chance to speak to her, after her lecture Georgetown University, which was on the subject of using modern techniques on old documents without damaging them.

So instead, he merely said, "Dr. Morrow, I'm a huge fan of your work—have been, for ages now."

She gave a polite smile, one as tight and quick as her handshake. He'd expected no less—from her cool eyes to her deep, flat, meticulously unaccented voice, Maura Morrow had always been a perfect picture of the ice queen. In the recorded interviews he'd seen, she'd always been aloof, distant without being outright rude, polite but never overly friendly.

"For ages, you say?" There was a flicker of amusement in her silver eyes. "How old were you when you became a fan—five?"

He gave a light grin at the question—he looked like a kid, he knew. He didn't point out that there were less than twelve years between his age and hers.

My, look at this boy, she thought. He was practically blushing, and all she'd done was lightly tease him about his youthful looks. She'd seen that look before—yes, he was definitely a fan, though his devotion was less to her line of work and more likely to the curve of her hips. It happened, sometimes. You were an intelligent woman with a modicum of good looks, you became the pin-up girl for the nerdy young boys who were interested in whichever field you represented. Harmless crushes, for the most part.

She tried not to indulge those crushes, but she gave a good-natured smile as she added a note of warmth to her tone, "Thank you for coming—I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Benjamin."

"Well, thank you, Benjamin. I hope you enjoy the book."

"I will—I mean, I did."

She offered another smile, and he knew it was time to move on. As he turned to go, he saw her face light up in recognition at the man standing in line behind him. However, he kept moving—he didn't want to hang around and look desperate.

This time, Maura didn't have to force herself to smile—the sight of her former colleague produced a genuine reaction of surprise and delight.

"Hello, Doc." He took her hand, but instead of shaking it, he merely held it, clasping both hands over hers.

"Hello, John," she mimicked his gesture, placing her free hand on his knuckles. "It's been a while."

"It has," he admitted. "But you seem to be doing well."

"I am, I am," she nodded in agreement. "Now, tell me, Mr. Curtis, how are you?"

"Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what."
~Salman Rushdie.

*Author's Note: First, sorry for such a long absence—for me, holiday time is writing and illustrating books for all the children in my life, and that list happens to get a bit longer every year, so…if you want faster updates, try telling my friends and family to stop having children, I suppose.

Second, a huge thank you to everyone who's followed, favorited, and reviewed this story so far (and yes, I still haven't responded to the last round of reviews, so I'll be taking care of those very soon). Thanks for sticking with it for so long—as the new year dawns, I wish many happy returns for the days ahead. May your days be merry and bright, and may you always walk in love and light.

Third, an even bigger THANK YOU to everyone who took the time and made the effort to nominate my stories for the 2015 Profiler's Choice Awards. I only wrote 2 stories last year (which makes me realize how much I need to get back to the short-story game, man), but they've garnered 4 nominations between them, thanks to you guys. I'm also a nominee for Best Overall Author, and I can shamelessly admit that the sound I made upon reading that message probably scared every person in my apartment complex. I am overwhelmed with gratitude to even be considered. We writers put so much of our hearts and effort into these stories, it's nice to be reminded that they are appreciated and at times, even loved. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my coffee-filled, ink-stained heart. You guys rock out hard like nobody's business.*