“Tell me again who picked out a flight for us that arrived at 11 PM and why?” Mark asked, yawning into his hand as the luggage carousel lurched to life in front of them.

“I did,” Jinyoung said. “Because it was the cheapest flight to Denver.”

“Come on, man, you’re not earning bank left and right just to pinch pennies on the things that matter,” BamBam groaned. “Thank god I had the common sense to book my own hotel room. You guys are probably staying at Budget Inn, right?”

“Holiday Inn,” Jinyoung corrected.

“Heh. Well, I’ll be chilling out in 4-star luxury over at the Sheraton like a prince. You guys will just have to check out my montages on Instagram while you wallow in 3-star averageness.”

“It’s kind of stupid,” Mark pointed out. “We’re here as a team, and you can’t even be bothered to stay in the same hotel as us.”

“It’s not stupid at all. Everyone benefits from a narrative where you two have your own hotel, sharing a room with absolutely no managerial supervision.” BamBam grabbed his bulging suitcase and camera bag from the carousel. “Now, I’ve got a shuttle to the Sheraton to catch. Ta-ta.” With a dab attempt greatly hindered by his baggage, he swaggered off in the direction of the bus terminals.

“What’s he talking about?” Jinyoung asked.

“Nothing,” Mark said quickly. Jinyoung, as always, hadn’t seen the comments that had spawned from their announcement about the special trip to Denver, but Mark and BamBam had. The Markjin shippers were in a frenzy at the possibility of hotel rooms (which seemed odd to Mark, since he and Jinyoung already lived together which should have made the prospect of a hotel a little less spicy to the fangirl fantasy), with most of their comments joking about the “forced to share one bed” trope and how it would play out between them.

As it so happened, Mark and Jinyoung were going to be sharing one bed, but this was no last minute surprise they’d have to scramble to deal with. Jinyoung had specifically chosen a room with a single bed because it was cheaper, and announced it to Mark the second the reservation had gone through. “Hope you don’t mind,” he’d said. “I figured you and I were kind of beyond the point of getting awkward, considering that we, you know, already live in pretty close quarters to begin with.”

Speak for yourself, Mark had thought. It had been a little disheartening to hear that Jinyoung had no concerns about any awkward situations arising, because Mark was about 100% sure he’d have to deal with one awkward situation in particular as soon as he got in bed with Jinyoung. Thank god he slept essentially fortressed by pillows, which could defend him against having his body physically touching Jinyoung’s and making the problem worse.

Eventually their luggage showed up on the carousel, and they were at last able to head outside to hunt down their own shuttle bus. When they got a certain amount of distance away from the airport, they could see the top part of the building was tented up in the shape of mountains to represent the Rockies the state was famous for.

“We get a few days off after the interview before we go home, right?” Jinyoung asked, gazing up at the artificial peaks. “I kind of want to go hiking on the real thing. There’s some beginner trails on the Rockies, right?”

“Right. I’m totally up for giving it a try with you.”

“Let’s not tell BamBam.”

“Deal. We’ll have another adventure on our own.”

Jinyoung grinned. “My favorite kind of adventure.”

They both dozed off a little on the shuttle ride until they reached the Holiday Inn and had to rouse themselves enough to check in and head up to their room. It was fairly nice, considering that Jinyoung had picked out the cheapest option. The bed was spacious enough to where Mark probably wouldn’t have to worry about bumping into Jinyoung too much, and there was more than enough room to spread out their things without constantly being on top of each other.

Not that Mark even wanted to think about unpacking anything right now, with how sleepy he was. Still, he felt like he needed some time to mentally prepare himself before getting into bed. “Hey, I’m going to hop in the shower if you don’t mind,” he told Jinyoung.

“That’s fine,” Jinyoung said. “I’ll take mine in the morning.”

It took Mark awhile as always to figure out the shower controls—why couldn’t the world just agree on one common sense way to turn on a shower?—but it felt good to scrub off when he finally got in. Traveling was always exhausting in its own way, but he was still so psyched to be in Denver for their special filming. He still couldn’t believe Jinyoung had pulled out this kind of big gun as a Valentine’s Day gift, considering the $3.00 ‘CALL HOME’ bear from the year before. The true crime writer Spring Townsend had been Mark’s springboard (no pun intended) into the world of criminology when he was in high school, when he’d picked up her most well-known book “Aspen” at the airport so he’d have something to do on a long international flight with his family. Mark had never been a big reader, but he hadn’t been able to put the book down during the entire trip, and when he’d finished it, he’d gone on a binge-read of all of Spring’s other true crime books. To him, Spring was the living goddess of crime writing—she was sharp, intelligent, passionate, and deeply empathetic with those suffering in the aftermath of a crime. She understood the pain of the families better than anyone—after all, her own springboard into the world of criminology had been the murder of her fifteen year-old daughter, Aspen.

Mark was incredibly excited to have the chance to meet with her and take a closer a look at the case that served as the backbone for all of her work, and he was still deeply touched that Jinyoung had gone out of his way to arrange the whole thing for him. It was just the kind of thing he’d do, taking that extra step for Mark beyond what anyone else would even think of or consider—that genuine kindness and deep understanding of what was important to Mark was a huge part of the reason he loved Jinyoung so much in the first place.

It's so easy to love him, Mark thought to himself as he shut off the shower. And yet absolutely not easy at all. If I can survive this trip without something horrifyingly embarrassing happening, I’ll consider it a success.

When he stepped outside the bathroom after changing into his pajamas and brushing his teeth, he saw that Jinyoung was also already in his pajamas and snuggled under the covers, reading Mark’s very worn and dog-eared copy of “Aspen.” He looked up when Mark walked in, and set the book down. “I still need to brush my teeth. Do you want me to turn off the lights when I come back in? Are you ready to go to sleep?”

Physically, yes, mentally, no. Still, he nodded. It was probably going to take him awhile to fall asleep with Jinyoung so close, so better to get an early start.

While Jinyoung brushed his teeth in the bathroom, Mark set up his pillow fort, putting one at his back, one wedged between his legs, and one wrapped up in his arms like a lover—this would be the all-important pillow of the night, the one that would hopefully keep him from reaching out and wrapping Jinyoung up in the same way. In the fantasies of their fans, such an accidental embrace would probably lead to a flustered confession and a passionate kiss (which would then shift into some pretty animalistic screwing), but in reality it would most definitely lead to Mark having to explain an inevitable physical reaction to Jinyoung, who would probably wind up feeling either vaguely grossed out or hysterically amused. Mark, frankly, did not want to put up with either.

Jinyoung emerged from the bathroom a few moments later, glancing at Mark’s pillow arrangement with an amused expression. “Maybe next year I can get you one of those anime body pillow covers for Valentine’s Day so you have a waifu to snuggle with.”

“Maybe I’ll buy you a step stool to help you get off my back.”

“Oooh, fighting words.” Jinyoung switched off the lights and slid into bed. Mark couldn’t see him as clearly now, but already his other senses were adjusting. He could smell the aroma of mint toothpaste, hand soap, and the pine shampoo he had bought during a sale at the supermarket last week. Mark shut his eyes, trying to empty his thoughts. Trying not to think too much about the shape of the body beside him and how much he would have loved to hold that warmth against him instead of the cold fabric of the pillow.

“Goodnight, Mark,” Jinyoung whispered after a moment, as if they were two children at a slumber party letting each other know it was all right to go to sleep now.

Mark let his lips curl into a slight smile in response. “Night, Jinyoung.”

Mark knew from the moment he laid eyes on Spring Townsend that he was going to like her. She radiated ‘cool’ in the kind of way many middle-aged women tried for, but few could pull off as effortlessly as this woman did. She was wearing a pair of floral pants that would have looked ridiculous on someone else but looked fun and stylish on her, paired with suspenders over a white t-shirt which showed the aspen tree tattoo which spanned almost the entire length of her left arm. She had warm brown skin and a thick head full of braids that spilled out of her white beret.

“You made it!” she said in a voice so warm that it sounded as if their arrival was the happiest moment of her life. “Look at you! Just as handsome in person! Our legendary men of mystery themselves!”

“We’re happy to meet you, too, Mrs. Townsend,” Mark said, pumping her hand.

“Oh no, none of that ‘Mrs.’ business, please. I didn’t go through years of resigning myself to this hippie name my mama gave me just to have no one use it. Call me Spring—Mama named me after Colorado Springs, can you believe it? Of course, I did the same with my own girl and named her Aspen after the city.” She turned her attention to BamBam. “Now, here’s a handsome guy I don’t have the pleasure of knowing the name of yet.”

“It’s BamBam,” he said, sticking out the hand that wasn’t holding the camera he was already filming potential footage with. “I’m the manager of these two.”

“BamBam! Was your mama a hippie, too?”

“Nope. It’s just a childhood nickname. My real name’s a mouthful.”

“Well! I think it must be the most absolute fun thing to be the manager of such a fantastic duo. Let me tell you, I did not know much about the true crime market on YouTube until I heard about that murder case you guys helped close, but lord did I have the time of my life going through and watching your videos! I hope this doesn’t sound like I don’t take you seriously, but you two are just the cutest! Makes me wish I had a partner to tackle cases and share a bit of the heavy emotional load with. You two just look so happy to be working together that I swear I feel a bit lonely at the end of every video.” She grinned. “But let’s not think I’m shallow and only care about how cute you two are. I also think you’re clever, and have great minds for deduction. I’m absolutely tickled that you’re a fan of my books, because I’m a fan now of you two as well.”

“Thank you, but we have a long way to go before we reach your level,” Mark said. “Your books are some of the best out there.”

“Oh, nonsense. I write good books, you make good videos. It’s all the same good, so I don’t need you thinking too highly of me at the cost of not thinking highly enough of yourselves.” She clapped her hands together. “You’ll be needing to set up, I know, but can I get you something? Coffee? Cookies? Wait, I’ve got some fresh cornbread that I whipped up this morning—let’s have some of that!”

The four of them split the cornbread while they got the cameras arranged and Spring cleared off the surfaces of her tables so they weren’t covered in notebooks and news clippings. She definitely had a writer’s house—books, magazines, and newspaper were everywhere, and the small space was practically buried in words. Mark knew she lived alone—her husband had passed away, and she had never remarried or had any other children after Aspen’s death—but the household still somehow felt full of life and energy.

When they finished setting up, Mark and Jinyoung took a seat on Spring’s well used couch. They had already filmed a little intro in their home base studio prior to coming to Colorado, so they were ready to launch right into the initial interview with Spring.

“I think Jinyoung has told you this already, Spring,” Mark began, “but I became a fan of your work the way most people probably did: by reading your debut crime non-fiction, ‘Aspen.’”

“Of course,” Spring said with a nod. “You probably remember how that book starts off, don’t you?”

“Yes. In the opening lines, you say This is the first murder I have ever written about, and it’s a murder I will never stop writing about until the day I die. I may dissect other cases. I may explore other deaths. But every single one of them will always link back to this one. Could you tell us a little more about what you mean by that?”

“Think of it like this, Mark. When you talk about love, you think about the person you love. You may read other love stories or consider someone else’s definition of what love is, but you always come back to your own story and your own definition. That’s how it is with me. Every murder I read or write about brings me back to the one I lived. I see my sorrow in the sorrow of others. I recognize the confusion and terror of the family of victims as my own confusion and terror. I see autopsy photos and see those same stitches on the cold flesh of my baby girl. In a way, I use these other stories and other deaths to cope with and confront my daughter’s so that I never run away from it or turn my face from what happened. What happened to her has happened to so many other girls, and they need to have their stories told and told over and over again so that people remember that they lived and how precious their lives were so they understand the true tragedy of their deaths.”

“Can you tell us about Aspen?” Jinyoung asked gently.

“Oh, I tell everyone about Aspen. That’s the only way she gets to live now, is through my words and memories. So I’ll talk your damn ears off about Aspen.” Spring smiled—a rich smile filled with both absolute joy and deep pain. “Living with Aspen was like living in a luxury suite next to train tracks. You think everything’s calm and peaceful one second, and the next you’ve got clanging bells and horns going off at 3 in the morning and you’re asking yourself why you put up with this insanity only to remember when the clamor dies down that you’re surrounded by all this priceless beauty and comfort—only to have the crazy train come back a few hours later and drive you bonkers.” She laughed. “Aspen was my sea of calm. She was also my typhoon season. She was both the angel on my shoulder, and the devil. She made me crazy, but she also made me so very happy in so many ways. She filled the role of ‘all I have left’ for the fifteen years of her life. Her daddy died when I was pregnant with her—his plane got shot down when he was serving overseas. My parents died years before, and I didn’t have any siblings or much of an extended family. It was always just me and Aspen. And I felt just with that, I had everything I needed.”

“I know a lot of mother-daughter duos have a difficult time navigating the teen years,” Mark said. “How did you two hold up?”

“Lord have mercy, but did that girl have an eye for boys. Not obtainable ones, mind you. Always the boy bands and the teen heartthrobs and the college athletes, the ones she’d have to pay hundreds of dollars to catch a glimpse of in person. I bet she would have been over the moon about you two, as well—you were just her thing. Boys that lived in her fantasy world, where everything was clouds and rainbows, the type of pretty that makes you happy just to see it, even if you know you’ll never be able to touch it.” Spring shook her head. “I let her do her thing, but sometimes I wish we could have talked more about things other than boys. Especially since my mama always told me that the more you dream of a boy as a fantasy, the more the reality of one will disappoint you.” Her smile faded a little. “And so it did.”

Mark took a breath. Time to shift into an even harder subject. “Can you tell me about the day Aspen went missing?”

“Down to the last detail. I did that thing where I picked it to pieces and tried to find every place where I could have done something differently. I lived that day over and over again, trying to find a different outcome. It was an evil thing to do to myself. I guess I knew in my heart of hearts that what was done was done, and that no way of reversing time existed. It was just a whip I needlessly used to strike myself over and over again like those self-flagellators everyone thinks are crazy. But that’s the thing: when you lose someone you love, a part of you starts to think you deserve to never stop hurting. You become that exact brand of crazy.” She twirled one of her braids. “And I guess I also wanted to absolve Aspen a little, and shift the blame on myself. You don’t want to be angry at your missing, possibly deceased child. But she did lie to me that day. She called me from school to tell me she was going home with her best friend Deb so they could study for a history test. Even got Deb on the phone to confirm this to me—and Deb was usually one of those good girls who can’t tell a lie to save her life. Maybe it was easier, since it was over the phone. Or because she was afraid Aspen would get mad at her if she didn’t. I told you, my daughter was a typhoon when she wanted to be. You sometimes did what you could just to hold her back, even at a cost to yourself.”

“When did you find out she wasn’t at Deb’s?”

“It got to be around 8 PM, the time I told her to be home by. I called up Deb’s mama Patty and asked her if the girls had finished studying. She told me Aspen had never been by—and then proceeded to give Deb a good talking to about lying which I had to listen to on the other line. I asked Deb if she knew where Aspen really was, and all she knew was that Aspen had gotten herself a boyfriend. She didn’t know his real name, because she and Aspen always talked in code about him, because he was supposed to be a secret. They called him Toby after that one boy band member Aspen had posters of—Aspen chose that name because her Toby was as dreamy and sweet as the real thing, Deb said.”

“Had you ever heard her mention anything about ‘Toby’ before?”

“I didn’t have a damn clue! It was this big secret game to her, and I was one of the ones it was being kept secret from. I called up all her friends to see if they could tell me any more about this boy so I could track them down, but they echoed nothing but Aspen’s girlish fluff back at me. ‘He’s just like the boys in magazines’ and ‘he’s got a driver’s license and Aspen says he takes her around to the shops and buys her things like a princess’ and ‘he’s like prince charming come to life.’ None of that told me who this boy was and where he’d gone with my daughter. I called up the police to report her missing, and as soon as they sent an officer to talk to me, well…” Her tone got harsh. “That was the nail in Aspen’s coffin, right there. They come here to see that it’s a black woman reporting her fifteen year-old black daughter missing and it ceased to be an investigation for them.”

“You think racism hindered the initial investigation?”

“Internalized racism, yes. The kind that makes people think ‘this black guy in baggy pants walking into my store may rob me’. I’m sure you get internalized assumptions about you as Asian men, but let me tell you the kind black girls get. They don’t get to be ‘girls’. They’re kids, and then in the eyes of the world around them, they are women. No in between. These officers think of a fifteen year-old white girl, and they think of girls in uniforms and ponytails still in the bloom of innocence and naivety, girls who need protection, girls who can be taken advantage of, girls whose absence is a threat and a tragedy. They think of a fifteen year-old black girl, they think of her as ‘mature’ and ‘older than her years,’ a girl who has probably lost her ity ages ago, a girl who never even knew the definition of innocence, a girl who doesn’t need protection because the color of her skin makes her a sister of danger, a girl whose absence is only natural because she’s run off with some boyfriend who’ll get her pregnant and run off, which is hardly a crime to them because a black girl doesn’t exist in their mental space as a minor.”

“Did they decline to report her as missing?”

“They filed her as missing. There was paperwork. There was no investigation. At least not by them.” She lifted her chin. “I was the one getting the word out, calling everyone I could think of to help me find out who ‘Toby’ was and where he may have taken Aspen. It was one of the ladies I called who told me to call Rosalind Taylor’s mama.”

“Who was Rosalind Taylor?”

“That’s what I wanted to know! I’d never heard of Rosalind Taylor! I’d never heard that there was another black girl in our area who’d gone missing! But when I called up Mrs. Taylor, she told me everything. She told me about her daughter disappearing a month ago, and how it had also seemed like her girl had run off with a boy none of her friends knew about. And then she told me about Emmie Wilde—who I also never knew about until she told me! A recent unsolved case involving the body of a young black girl who’d been found murdered in the woods near a highway. Murdered, and I’d never heard about it!”

“This may come as a surprised to some of our viewers, who are used to what we know as ‘missing white woman syndrome’,” Jinyoung said. “They may be used to the idea that when a woman or girl goes missing, the media will give it wall-to-wall coverage until she is found, alive or dead.”

“Well! Let me tell you—if they’d put my Aspen on the news with wall-to-wall coverage when she was missing, those newscasters would have been buried in complaints about wasting their viewers’ time! They’d have pegged her as a runaway or a victim of black-on-black crime—and they don’t care about that! That’s our problem, not theirs, they think. That’s how they feel about it even if someone winds up dead. They still don’t care! A human life, and it’s all meaningless to them!” She folded her arms across her chest. “No, Aspen wasn’t going to get any TV time or sympathy. Not Rosalind or Emmie either. They ended up on TV because I did something crazy and got myself on TV.”

“And what did you do?”

“I caught their killer.” Her smile at last returned. “And I invited you out here to show you how.”

“So this was the very same car you used, back then?” Mark asked from the passenger seat of Spring’s black Toyota Camry.

“The very same. These Toyotas I swear will outlast us all. I’ve been with this car longer than I got to be with my own husband!” She patted the steering wheel. “It’s like a part of the family. I secretly hope it lives forever so I never have to say goodbye to it.” She to a stretch of road, pulling the car over to the side. “All right. This is probably not what you think of when you think of a ‘highway,’ but that’s what we call it. It’s more like what you think of when you think of a long, country road. Not a lot of entrances and exits. Just a lot of road.”

She drove for a little more, then parked the car. They all got out, and BamBam filmed as they walked into the woods. The trees were dense, making it seem darker than it was outside their canopy. There was a damp, earthen smell to the woods that combined with the crisp, bracing scent of mountain air that seemed to permeate through Denver.

“I found the bodies before I found the killer,” Spring said. “Usually people pull together search parties for that, and the police supports their efforts, but for me...well, at that point, I trusted myself more than I trusted the police. I grew up in Colorado, and I know a thing or two about making it through the woods, so I thought I’d give it a try on my own. It probably wasn’t the normal thing to do, in hindsight, but I guess in hindsight none of what I did looks normal now.” She laughed bitterly. “I found Rosalind first. The poor thing…the condition she was in…a whole month, left alone in these cold and unforgiving woods. It hurts even more to think that if I hadn’t gone looking for her, she may have never been found. No one really comes through these woods—not vagrants, not hunters. Just wildlife, and us Coloradans know better to mess around with them. The only reason poor Emmie had been found in the first place is because she’d been sloppily ‘dumped,’ as they call it, too close to the highway. The perp may have gotten spooked by another car or an animal and done a botched job of it.”

“How long was it before you found Aspen?”

“It was close to nightfall, around when I was thinking about wrapping my search up and covering the rest the next day.” Spring fell silent for a moment, her voice dropping when she spoke again. “She spent only a week out there, by herself. Much shorter than what Rosalind endured, but all seven of those days is a weight on my heart. My baby girl, having her final sleep on the hard earth, hidden from the world. Left to be forgotten.” She suddenly dropped to her knees, touching the bark of a nearby tree. There was a small cross on the earth near the tree, marked with the name ‘ASPEN.’ “Right here,” she said. “I found her right here.”

They all gave her a moment of silence. Mark felt Jinyoung’s fingers snaking around his wrist, as if seeking his pulse. Mark pulled his hand back so he could hold onto him, linking their fingers together. I’m right here. I’m alive. Sometimes you had to assure yourself of that, when the world reminded you of how many people were taken away too soon.

“The sadness came later,” Spring said after a moment. “Right at that moment, the moment I knew she was dead, I was just angry. I was angry that some man had broken into her life and taken it from her for nothing more than his sick pleasure. That someone had treated her like she was something to be used and tossed out. That someone had ripped her out of her clouds and rainbows and slammed her into the dirt. I was livid with anger. All I could think of was making him pay—whoever he was.”

"But you didn't know anything about him, did you?" Mark asked. "You didn't have his real name or even know what he looked like."

"You're right," she said. "But I did know the idiot liked dumping bodies in these woods. I figured he'd come back."

"But weren't the police involved at this point?" Jinyoung asked. "You'd just discovered two bodies. They must have realized they had a budding serial killer on their hands."

"And that, Jinyoung, was the crazy thing I did—I didn’t call the bodies into the police.”

“Why not?”

“Honestly, it was probably because my brain was a mixed up mess of anger and grief. Also, probably because I watch too much damn TV. I’d seen cases where the serial killer monitors him or herself on TV and switches strategies when the cops are onto the whole thing. He’d been getting away with it so far and felt comfortable using those woods as dumping grounds, but he’d change things up as soon as the police started sniffing around, and then they’d lose their way of getting him. He’d disappear for a while and then reemerge later using some other wooded highway to dump girls with impunity. I was not about to let that happen.” She grimaced. “There was also something else that was strange about the place where I found my daughter. Fresh footprints near her body. And oddest of all, it was the height of fall and leaves were falling like wild, but there were so few on her body given that she’d lain there a week right under a tree. He must have been visiting her body, like some of those sick bastards do. And that messed up, angry mind of mine decided I was going to wait for him to come back and visit her.”

“You decided to catch him on your own?” Mark asked. He already knew how this story went, of course, but a part of him could never fully believe that she’d actually gone through with it. If he’d been in her shoes, he wondered if he would have been truly capable of doing the same. It was hard to say, without a mother’s feelings to call upon. But at the same time, he understood how love could change you in ways, and make you do things you would have never felt possible.

“I lost my only child,” Spring said after a moment. “But I was still a mama. A mama in the grips of anger at having failed her duty to protect her child. But she wasn’t gone entirely, not all the way. There was still her memory to protect. Her story, and its final chapter. I wasn’t going to let it end with a question mark. I wanted to end it with a rallying cry, a scream in the face of her killer and men like him that they do not get to rule over the lives of women and girls with fear and abuse. So yes, I decided to catch him on my own.”

“What was your plan?”

“I went back and drove my car into the nearest lot off the highway, and came back on foot so he wouldn't know anyone was in the area. There was underbrush around the path one would take to get to her body, so I hid myself in that, keeping my body low and flat in the dirt for hours just watching the entrance to the woods near where my baby was resting. He came at about 1 AM. Got out of his car—a black van. Later the police would examine it and find that he removed the handles from the inside, and kept garbage bags and zip ties back there. A torture chamber on wheels, essentially.” Her jaw twitched. “I didn’t know any of this back then. I barely thought of anything in those moments. I just saw him get out, this skinny little thing with a shock of blonde hair and a blue polo as if he was off the bag of one those teen clothing stores at the mall, and I saw him go into the woods to where my girl was and where I was lying in wait, and I shot out hand and grabbed him by the ankle and just yanked him down with all my might.” She mimed the motion, gritting her teeth. “And while the little was screaming about ghosts and pissing himself, I twisted his arms behind his back with a strength I didn’t even know I had and pinned him with my body, gave him a good whack in the pressure point in his neck, and called the police to let them know I’d solved my daughter’s murder for them.”

Mark had remembered the first time he’d read her account of this in the book, and how floored he’d been by her straightforward description of what had been an act of almost insane courage and daring. She spoke of it as if it was the easiest thing in the world she’d ever done—and perhaps, given the rage and adrenaline pumping through her, maybe it was.

“I don’t talk about my daughter’s killer much,” Spring said. “You can fill in those details for your audience on your own time. This isn’t his story. My summary of him is just this: An eighteen year old wannabe heartthrob with a punchable face who took advantage of the fact that he looked like a fantasy to act upon the sick fantasies of his own. Clint Underwood, but I prefer to call him ‘.’ Much more accurate.”

Mark respected her wishes not to talk about him. He and Jinyoung would probably go back later and at least fill their viewers in on Clint Underwood’s trial and some of the information yielded during his police questioning about his modus operandi, but he was not who Spring had ever wanted the spotlight of the story shone upon.

“A central theme of your narrative in ‘Aspen’ is that it is the story of your daughter and Rosalind and Emmie, more so than Clint’s and more so than yours,” Mark said. “Was it hard to keep the focus of the resulting media attention on them rather than your…atypical…capture of the killer?”

She nodded. “Very. The media even gave me the nickname ‘Panther Mama’ and used it in all their coverage as if we were back in the age of yellow journalism and ‘Black Dahlia’ madness. But the way I looked at it, nobody cared about the disappearances, and probably most people wouldn’t have cared about the murders if it had gone the by-the-book way and the police had taken care of it. People only cared because they thought what I had done was crazy and badass, and that’s why it ended up on TV. People wanted to interview the Panther Mama and get off on the vigilante justice aspects all the people juiced up on super heroes can’t get enough of. Well, it was interest for the wrong reasons, but interest I could still take advantage of. I took every one of those interviews and went on every show that would take me, and I used that platform to talk about Aspen and Rosalind and Emmie instead of myself. I talked about how the police failed them, how society fails girls like them every day, and how we need to make their story more of a conversation than my big moment of vigilante justice.” She turned to BamBam’s camera, addressing the viewers. “Some people say a fascination with murder and death and serial killers and crime is morbid. I say, be fascinated as much as you like. Remember these stories. Thirst for justice. Let yourself be sickened by the evil in this world. Keep the conversation going, and never let it die out. Like I said, I will never stop writing about this murder or telling this story. People need to remember Aspen Townsend the fifteen year old black girl and realize there are black girls out there whose stories never get told because people do not care. If hearing this story makes you care, then I am going to keep telling this story until my dying breath and hope people like you keep on telling it after I’m gone.”

They went back to Spring’s house after that for lunch. With the most difficult and personal story told, they began to discuss other things, though like Spring had said, everything to her had a thread tying back to Aspen. She talked about some of her other books, and gave Mark and Jinyoung a few leads on crimes they should consider covering that lacked attention from both the journalistic and YouTube/podcast sides of the market. She was also filled with questions about their own show—how they’d met, what went into their filming process, how they did their research, and if they had any plans to expand their operations in the future.

When their time began to wrap up, Spring leaned forward, studying the two of them closely. “So, let me get this straight. Jinyoung, you got the idea to call me out as a Valentine’s Day present to your partner over here?”

Jinyoung looked a little embarrassed. “I thought…I thought it would be a special gift. Mark’s a huge fan of yours, and we’d talked in the past about doing more on-scene stuff instead of just sitting in our same old studio all the time. Like I mentioned in my original letter to you, Mark covered Aspen’s case for a class project, and I just remember him getting so passionate over it, criticizing the way both the media and law enforcement only highlight minority killers while brushing over minority victims…when I thought of that, I just…” He darted his eyes away. “I just wanted him to have this opportunity to cover the case again. To a larger audience. With you.”

Spring lifted an eyebrow, crossing her legs and clasping her hands over her knee. “Well,” she said. “If this doesn’t remind me of the year I beggared my buying a trip to New Orleans for my husband—my boyfriend, back then—since he’d been wanting to go there ever since he was a little boy. When I got him those tickets, his face lit up like a child, and I felt like I’d done the greatest thing, making him smile like that.” She grinned at the memory. “But in my heart of hearts, the gift I’d truly wanted to give him was a well-written argument on why he should get down on one knee and ask me to marry him. But fool I was, I chickened out and the lazy man took another two years to come up with the idea to propose on his own.” She looked back and forth between the two of them. “Moral of the story? Give both. Give both damn gifts—the one you know will make them happy, and the one you know will make you happy.” Her gaze was particularly pointed to the extent that Mark was almost worried she was reading into his mind and knew what he was thinking, but just as he was about to look away, she uncrossed her legs and flashed them both a bright smile. “Now, speaking about the issue of doing more for minority victims…”

They were once again both on the sleepy side when they made it back to the Holiday Inn that night. Mark took another shower, and Jinyoung took one after him. While Jinyoung was in the bathroom, Mark opened up his copy of “Aspen” to the photo section in the middle where Spring had compiled a collection of photos of her daughter. Mark’s favorite was one of Aspen holding a pink, sparkly microphone in her hand and posing like a diva. You could almost see in her eyes the youthful brightness, all the excitement of those clouds and rainbows in her beautiful inner world.

Mark heard the sound of a phone camera snapping and looked up. Jinyoung had emerged from the bathroom, and had his smartphone pointed at Mark.

“You didn’t warn me you were going to start a photoshoot,” Mark said, closing the book.

“I didn’t want to warn you. The picture worked because you were lost in the moment and weren’t aware of anything else.” Jinyoung set down his phone and plunked down on the bed beside Mark.

“You’re not going to post that on your Instagram, are you?”

“No, it’s just for me. Don’t worry. I’m not about to let the fans see you in your bathrobe.” He smiled. “So…did you like your gift?”

Mark nodded. “Seriously. Thank you. It was incredible meeting her in person. I know she really doesn’t want to emphasize her bad assery in catching Clint Underwood…but she seriously is one, isn’t she?”

“I think so, too. And she uses her platform to get some amazing things done on top of it.” Jinyoung paused. “That project you did about Aspen was before the project we did together, remember?”

“Uh-huh. Right.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before, but, um…I really admired you, from that moment. I thought your presentation was the best in the class. So when you approached me to work on that video project together as soon as it was announced…I frankly almost had a heart attack. That someone like you wanted to work with someone like ​me.”

Mark stared at him blankly. He’d thought Jinyoung had seemed more relieved that someone was willing to work with him at all rather than excited that it had been Mark in particular. “Really?”

“Really. I couldn’t have chosen anyone I would have rather partnered up with than you. So…when that video got big and BamBam approached us about working in the long term together doing My Men of Mystery…”

“Yeah?”

“Well…I probably felt ten times more ecstatic than even you did meeting Spring Townsend today.” Jinyoung smiled sheepishly. “So…that’s just some more of the context that went into choosing this gift that maybe you didn’t know about.”

“Oh,” Mark said, struck practically speechless.

“Yes.” Jinyoung looked up from his phone, meeting Mark’s eyes over it. “So…did I make up for the bear last year?”

“Of course.” Now the words were coming out of Mark in a rush. “But you didn’t really need to, I honestly thought the bear was cute and I’d never really expected you to get me anything at all, so just receiving something at all was really surprising and nice and you really don’t have to go above and beyond for me or anything-”

“I know that, Mark,” Jinyoung said with a smile. “I don’t have to do anything. I only ever do what I want to do. And I want to do more trips like this in the future for sure. How about going on the road more often?”

“Sure,” Mark said immediately. “I’d like that, too.”

“And let’s keep on getting hotels without BamBam,” Jinyoung added. “I like the quiet evenings like this with just us two. It’s just like home.”

A/N: This one was actually inspired by a crime that happened in my area when I was a younger--a woman witnessed the attempted abduction of a young black girl and single handedly fought off the kidnapper until he was incapacitated and could be taken in by the police. I remember in the TV footage, the woman said something along the lines of "If I hadn't stopped him, the police wouldn't have looked for her". I didn't understand why when I was younger, but it's something that always stuck with me, and growing up taught me exactly why...it's sad that so much time has passed, and these cases still fade into the background.

Anyways, the Colorado trip isn't over yet, so July with be a two chapter month! Stay tuned!