Dan nodded to Megan and followed Dan into the apartment.
Dan followed himself?
love the story!

I know that this is a rather late review, but I only discovered this website 2 months ago and alternate between reading the new postings and catching up on some of the older stories. I rarly like stories that go on for more that about 25-30 chapters, but I must admit that I got carried along by the ride! I have definately added you to my author alerts!

Whew! What a ride! This story gave me anxiety :-)

That has got to be the roughest serial murder I have heard of. There was a Supernatural episode (Time is on my side) where a Doctor with immortality had to replace his worn out parts from other people. In that episode, he cut out a man's heart while he was still conscious. I had to close my eyes and plug up my ears... The ribs crunching was just horendous. You described it almost too well!

I must be absolutely twisted, because I loved this chapter. Poor Don. Colby seems to be a wonderfully steady shoulder when someone has something to get off their chest. Another great intense scene at the end here, which is why I am still awake at 7:15 in the morning! I need to sleep! I hope a slow chapter is coming up soon...

OMG, this is intense! I hope he blew her f'ing head off! It is now almost 4am... Your stories are positively addicting! I can't even pause to write reviews... Thank God the story is already finished!

Great story! I'm relatively new to watching Numb3rs and reading the fanfiction here, and while I have read a few other good stories, this has to be one of the best ones I've read.

A couple things, though. I remember one chapter about half way through you spelt the FBI Killer's name Shelley a couple of times before switching it back to Shelly. There were also a couple of punctuation stuff that could have been better.

Also, I read in your profile that you said that this story had been plagiarized a couple of times. I can't people think that's a good thing to do and can get away with it. And that's apparently happened a couple of times, too! I'm curious... you mentioned in your profile that the author had changed the names of the characters to those of the Hardy Boys fandom, but did he/she change the location, too? This story is not the only one I've heard of (on this site) that's been plagiarized. I know that a couple of years ago a Dark Angel/Supernatural story was plagiarized.

Once again Alan just jumped out at me. He was only in the beginning of the chapter but you really seem to have nailed his personality. He seems to come alive instantly.

Poor Charlie - I can totally relate to him just taking off without even thinking when he saw the person from the window. I've done things like that myself - act first, think later. And when you DO stop and think it's like Don said 'What was I thinking?!'

I can also see it from Don's point of view too. They know so little about this killer right now, I can understand him worrying that Charlie could have been in serious danger had he run out into the yard and encountered the killer. If it was indeed the killer. Then again, who else would be hanging out in their backyard in the dark?

Hi, Alice

It's 9:30pm on Friday and I thought I'd jump 'back' into this story in it's intended fandom and by it's rightful author! And I thought it would get me primed and ready to watch Numb3rs tonight. ;-)

I REALLY love the way you are writing Alan!! Nothing I can put my finger on but you seem to have captured him perfectly. The second he appeared in this chapter I was immediately able to visualize him right down to the last detail. I felt like I could see him puttering around in the Eppes kitchen, as if I were watching this on television rather than reading the words. I could see his mannerisms, hear his voice... again, I can't tell you exactly why, but the scene with Alan and David just immediately came to life for me.

I did have one question about a character; not sure if she's going to figure in this story later on or was just mentioned in passing so I thought I'd ask. I wasn't sure who the Linda was that David was referring to. Is she his sister? While I watch the show quite often, I'm not quite as familiar with this fandom as most here are so I'm not sure if she is a canon character or an OC.

this chapter was so powerful. i liked how u gave subtle hints about what was going on without going overboard with the graphic details. awesome chap!

Thanks a million for this fascinating read. I'm also fascinated that with everything that was going on in your life at the time that you managed to write it so quickly. Me, when I write, I'm as slow as molasses.

The most wonderful thing about this story was that your grasp of the characters was so acute that barely any knowledge of the fandom was needed to understand their behavior and motivation. I know little or nothing about this fandom and at no point was this a liability to understanding your story. You also handled an intricate storyline with a miniumum of confusion and plot holes. I also liked the way you developed your original characters (or, at least, the characters I assumed were original). Bravo on a well crafted narrative.

That being said, I'm glad that you are now having this story beta read. There are a number of perfectly understandable typographical and grammatical errors. Having help weeding these out will only improve an already excellent story. These kinds of errors happen to even the best writers. That's why most professional writers rely heavily on their editors. Although, for the fact that you were mainly on your own, this really has a minimum of errors.

I only have just a few real quibbles:

1. Is the character's name 'Sborgia' or 'Saborgia'? You start with 'Sborgia' (which is more authentically Italian-looking) and then halfway through your story change to the second spelling. At one point, you were actually interchanging the two spellings in the same chapter.

2. You seem to have a certain minimum of words that you have a real difficulty with. I've already mentioned the lose/loose problem. You seem to have a similar problem with the word 'surely'. You consistently misspelled that as 'surly', often giving inadvertently humorous meanings to your sentences.

3. Quite often you leave out gramatically-necessary, but minor commas in sentences. Most of the time this detracts little from readers understanding your stories. Yet, once again, this can generate unintentionally humorous meanings.

I'm not going to give detailed examples of this, as I'm hoping a lot of that will be caught by your beta readers. I will just give some hypothetical examples:

>"I want you to sit down and eat Charlie," Alan shouted.<

Without the comma between 'eat' and 'Charlie', it does look as if some unspecified 'you' is being told to 'eat Charlie'. I would say that the majority of your missing commas are ones such as this--the commas that should be used to set off personal names (or pronouns that stand in for names) from the rest of the sentence.

Most of the time, this error is a relatively minor one; but there are sometimes when it muddies the meaning of the sentence enough to cause me to stumble in my reading. It has also caused for there to be another mysterious, ghostly character who turns up occasionally--Charlie Don.

"Yeah, Charlie Don fell asleep on the couch," Alan whispered.

There are several places in your narrative where this guy with the Asian-sounding surname has cropped up. He's easily banished back to ether, as I'm sure you are aware, by adding a comma between 'Charlie' and 'Don'.

As far as I remember, though, his twin brother Don Charlie hasn't popped up in this story. ;-)

I, myself, used to have trouble with these kinds of commas.

As I said above, I'm sure a good beta would weed out these little technical glitches.

I haven't read such a gripping story in a long time. I, myself, love a good father/son or brother/brother story and "Numb3rs" seems to have both. You have so fascinated me by these characters that I've added the first season DVD for "Numb3rs" to my Netflix queue and moved it up to first place in the list. I can't wait to see this show from the beginning.

As much as I detest plagiarism, I'm almost happy someone ripped off your story. I would never have found this on my own. I can't wait to read more of your stories. You seem to like angst and that is one of my favorite types of story to read (and to write). I can't wait to read more of your stories.

Thanks again for writing a story that I could barely put down.

Beth Palladino

This was an amazing chapter, how you managed to tell everything from Charlies POV. That, in a way, made it even more frightening because you put us, the readers, in Charlie's place. There's nothing more frightening than hearing something you can't seel.

I liked the use of the Yiddish curse, but can't help feeling that the little reminscence of Uncle Abe slowed the pace of the narrative down just at a place where it should keep speeding up. Maybe you could place the memory of Uncle Abe and his potty mouth at some earlier point in the narrative (maybe Charlie thinking of these curses to distract himself from panicking too much). Then you could still have the curse in the same place with a mere short reminder to the reader of Uncle Abe's curses.

Just an idea. Other than that, this was an awesome narrative.

Beth

Hi, I understand that 'evil woman' had a garrote around Charlie's neck, but it wasn't particuarly clear (unless I was reading too fast) that he was also drugged and unconscious. I wondered why he was so silent and thought that either Shelley had already threatened him to keep silent or he was paralyzed by fear. I did wonder, though, why Jon thought that Shelley could just let Charlie go. Now, I understand that it was because he was unconscious from a tranquiler dart. I didn't understand that until Shelly knocked out Jon too.

Other than that, this was an excellent chapter. You are really making Don and Charlie and the Numb3rs show very intriguing. I'll have to check it out on DVD. Thank God for Netflix.

By the way, I had pegged Shelley for the psycho when you first introduced her character. I'm of the same profession and everyone knows we are all really a bit crazy. Our mild-mannered exterior is just a disguise.

Thanks, Beth (who is home sick today and enjoying a good read like this to keep me distracted from my stomach)

LOL! A great twist at the end. I think I've already figured out who the evil woman is. Now to see if I'm correct. Poor Jon isn't the bad guy, but maybe the next victim. Great story.

Two teensy quibbles: I know that you said that your having this story gone over by a beta, but I thought I might point out what jumps out at me.

“You need to eat Charles." This should be "You need to eat, Charles" or he is being told to do something really weird. I know what you mean here, but sentences like this always catch me off guard and either confuse me or make me laugh (or both).

"The slower pace around campus between semesters had always accompanied a slight sense of loss for him as his internal thought processes never slowed down to match the slower campus pace between semesters." This sentence is grammatical, but more repetitive than it needs to be. In my opinion, it would be better as "The slower pace around campus between semesters had always accompanied a slight sense of loss for him as his internal thought processes never slowed down to match it."

Thanks for the interesting read, Beth

This is as far (if I recall) as I got in the other story...

So, I'll say the same thing in this review that I said in my last review for that other story. For some reason, I don't trust this Agent O'Donnell. Don't ask me why. Now, I'm interested to see if I'm right, because I've got this idea that the killer might be someone associated with the FBI.

Now, I'm interested to see if I'm right.

Thanks, Beth

This is the first chapter I ran across where the plagiarized version had anything (other than the character names) that was different than your story. I suppose some few adjustments in the narrative had to be made to make this story fit the Hardy Boys fandom.

I'm really loving your story and I can't wait to get beyond what I had read in that "Hardy Boys" story. It's a touch distracting to recall what I had just read a few days ago, if you know what I mean.

P.S. In this chapter you use the terms 'loose' or 'loosing' where you really meant 'lose' or 'losing'. A common error.

Thanks, Beth (P.S. I hope you don't mind me pointing out the occasional typo. It's the proofreader and editor in me. I just can't help noticing errors. In general, you write well.)