“Strike three! You’re out!”
Sam sighed wearily. She wasn’t sure how they had managed to talk her into this. An interagency softball game against the ATF. It was a rematch for last year’s football game that the VCTF had won. This year... things weren’t going so well.
‘“Somebody want to remind me again why we have to have girls on our team?” she could hear John ask as she walked back to the bench. His grin only widened as a glove flew at him. “Sorry... *women*... Why do we have to have *women* on our team?”
“Watch it, John,” George said. “Don’t annoy the pitcher. We still need her on our side, remember.”
“Sorry, Grace.” There wasn’t an ounce of sincerity in his apology as he tossed her glove back.
“Tell me something,” Grace said. “Would you be complaining quite so much if Campbell were on our team?” She pointed at the ATF agent playing third base.
“Her?” John squinted at the field. “She can hit. She can field. She can throw. There isn’t anything to complain *about*. Hey, Sam,” he turned to her as she sat down. “You know I’m just kidding, right? You gave it a good shot. It takes a lot of courage to get out there when... uh... It takes courage to... try something new...”
“It’s okay, John,” she smiled, letting him off the hook. “I know I’m lousy at...” She waved a hand vaguely at the field.
“Sports?” he said helpfully.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Sports. I’m lousy at sports.”
“That’s okay, Sam.” He wrapped an arm lightly around her shoulders. “You’re still my favorite forensic psychologist.”
She had to smile. What he lacked in tact, he did manage to make up for in charm.
“So, you up for pizza or something after the game?” he asked.
“Oh... I... I’m sorry... I... already have plans.” She hated watching the hopeful look fade from his face.
He visibly shook off his disappointment and gave her a crooked grin. “You and Chloe having a girls’ night?”
“N-no. Not really.” She hesitated, not sure how he would take it. “Paul... It’s just dinner...”
“Oh.” He looked back at the field. “Hey, Bailey’s up. I should be on deck.” He stood quickly.
On deck? Sam shook her head slowly. She could see the tension in him as he took a few practice swings. He didn’t seem any more relaxed when he stepped up to the plate a few minutes later. He cracked the ball solidly to center field on the first pitch. In moments he was standing on third base. If Sam didn’t know better she would have sworn that he had deliberately slowed. That wasn’t like him, she thought. He was so competitive and they were behind by so many runs. There was no reason for him to stop at third. No good reason.
Melissa Baxter, one of the agents who frequently guarded Chloe was up next. She was a... patient batter.
“Ball three!”
Sam glanced back at John, still on third base. She tried not to frown as she watched him apparently joking with the ATF agent. As she heard George laugh she realized that she wasn’t the only one watching him.
“Five bucks says he has her phone number by the end of the game.”
“Ten says he’ll have it by the end of the fifth inning,” Grace countered.
Sam knew they were both wrong. He would have it before he left the base.
*****
“... turns out the idiot had tried putting aircraft fuel in his car…”
John barely managed to avoid choking on his Coke as he tried to smother his laughter. They had been swapping FBI and ATF stories for over an hour and both their tales had gotten wilder and more unlikely as the evening progressed.
Andrea Campbell had readily accepted the pizza dinner that Sam had passed on. John didn’t want to dig too deeply into his own motivations for asking her out. He wanted to believe that it was simply because she was pretty and he really didn’t have anything better to do that evening. He tried not to think about Sam and Paul, who were probably somewhere far fancier than this pizzeria. It wasn’t as difficult as he expected. Andrea was actually turning out to be pretty good company.
Unlike most of his dates she understood his job well enough to know what to believe and what to laugh at. To his surprise and delight she could also carry on a decent conversation about basketball. She was a Clippers fan, but he supposed that he could overlook it. After all, she was actually laughing at his jokes. Bonus points for that. Still, it was only the first date. Maybe she was just being polite.
He mentally stopped in his tracks. First date? When did this go from “dinner” to “first date”, he wondered? He was startled to realize that he was already running his schedule through his mind, trying to find another open evening.
“So, how about doing this again sometime next week?” he asked as they walked to the parking lot.
“A *second* date?” she said in mock surprise. “With the ever-elusive John Grant? I’m honored.” She laughed at his expression. “You do have a reputation, Grant.”
“And how would you know about that?” he asked with a grin. He was surprised as she abruptly turned serious.
“Nick Cooper,” she said quietly.
He was speechless for a moment. “You knew Coop?” he said finally.
She nodded then shrugged. “Really just met him a couple of times. He’d come by the office when he was in town.” She toyed with her car keys as she spoke. “I’d seen you at a few things around town, crime scenes where our jurisdictions overlapped… So, when I learned he was working with the VCTF… I kind of asked about you…” She gave him a sheepish smile.
He smiled back. “So, you got the dirt on me from Coop and you *still* agreed to go out with me? Brave girl.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Actually, he said some pretty nice things about you. He said you two had a few differences… But for the most part, I think he seemed to like you.”
John gaped at her. “Coop?” he said. “We’re talking about *Nick* Cooper, right?”
“Yes. He said you two had a lot in common.”
“Really?” He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the concept.
“Well, he said you were both adrenaline junkies, were into sports, had problems with authority figures… He even said you had the same taste in women.”
“Maybe too much in common,” he muttered.
“You know,” she looked at him thoughtfully, “that’s almost exactly what he said, too… But he did say you were a decent guy. Despite the second date problem, of course.”
John nodded, still slightly bemused.
“John? Hello?” She looked at him intently in the dim light. “You really didn’t see it, did you?”
“No,” he admitted. “I guess not… Maybe… When I first met him, maybe…” he said slowly. He caught a brief memory flash of momentary camaraderie at his own first and only bomb-disarming. “But after that, things kind of went down hill…” He shrugged. “Guess it’s a little late now.”
“A little,” she agreed.
“So… About dinner?” he asked, shifting topics.
“Sounds good to me.”
“Even with my reputation?”
“Even with your reputation.”
*****
George looked up as John dropped into a nearby chair at the table. He smiled at the younger agent’s coffee mug. “I thought you were giving that stuff up. ‘Caffeine’ll kill you’,” he quoted.
“It’s Monday,” John muttered sleepily. “Can’t give up coffee on a Monday.”
“Rough weekend?” George teased. “You and ‘bomb girl’ sure seemed to hit it off Saturday.”
“She’s not a bomb girl,” John corrected with a grin. He straightened a little in his chair. “She’s with the Arson division.”
“Okay, so you and ‘fire girl’ sure seemed to hit it off.”
“Yeah.” His grin merely broadened. “I guess we did.”
“And would that be why you can’t seem to keep your eyes open this morning?”
“Mind your own business,” John suggested cheerfully.
George shook his head. Andrea Campbell would be at least the sixth woman John had gone out with in the past few months. It was a peculiar coincidence, he mused, that the closer Sam seemed to be getting to Paul, the faster John seemed to go through women.
*****
“Hi, Grace. How is it going?”
The dark-haired doctor looked up and smiled wearily at Sam. “I’ve finished with the first body, but I’m still working on the second. It’s so badly decomposed I’m not sure I’ll be able to get much from it. My notes from the first one are over on my desk,” she added.
Sam nodded but continued to stand watching Grace work. “Have you… seen John lately?” she asked.
“He came by a couple of hours ago and picked up the tox report on the Howard case. I think he was planning to head out early today.” She threw Sam a curious look that the psychologist completely missed.
“Anything special?” Sam asked.
Grace tried not to smile at her feeble attempt to sound casual. She shrugged instead and turned back to her microscope. “He said something about dinner.”
“With Andrea?”
“I think so.”
“He’s been going out with her for a couple months now.”
Grace sighed and looked up again. “Sam, if it bothers you… tell him.”
“It doesn’t… Why would it bother me?”
“Because you’re acting the exact same way he does whenever you go out with Paul. When are you two going to knock it off and start acting like grown-ups?”
Sam opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it and shook her head. She still stood uncertainly in the middle of the lab.
“The notes?” Grace reminded her. “They’re on my desk.”
*****
“You can’t be serious,” Andrea said. “John, this is a *nice* restaurant. Please don’t ask them for ketchup.”
John sighed theatrically. “Fine.”
Andrea shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t understand how you can have such good taste in everything else – clothes, cars - and yet you can be such a hayseed when it comes to food. I swear, some of the things you eat are just frightening.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” he teased.
“I used it all up on my job. We wrapped up two cases this week,” she told him. “How did the VCTF do?”
John pretended to frown. Their weekly team tallies were a running joke between them. “Our cases are a little more complicated than ‘who dropped a lighter’. You didn’t even have any bodies in those cases, did you?”
“How many did you solve, John?” she persisted with a grin.
“We’re working on ‘em…”
“Save it for channel eleven,” she laughed. “Speaking of work, there is something I wanted to run by you. A great opportunity just came up…”
“John?” a voice behind them interrupted.
John turned to see a small, tow-headed girl standing behind his chair. “Hey, Chlo! What’re you doing here?” He grinned as the child hugged him.
“Me and Mom… Mom and I,” she corrected herself. “We came out to dinner to celebrate my report card. I got all A’s,” she added proudly.
“Big surprise there, genius.” He realized that she was staring curiously at Andrea. “Oh, Chloe. This is Andrea… Ms. Campbell. Andrea, this is Miss Chloe Waters.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Campbell,” Chloe said carefully, holding her hand out to Andrea.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Miss Waters.” Andrea solemnly shook Chloe’s hand.
“Where’s your mom, Chlo?” John asked.
Chloe pointed back toward the opposite side of the restaurant. “She didn’t want to come talk to you,” she said with a child’s oblivious honesty. “But she said it was okay if I came… so long as I didn’t bother you too much.”
“You’re never a bother, Chloe,” he assured her. “And I’m really proud of you. I don’t think I ever got all A’s in my entire life.”
The little girl hugged him again. “I gotta go. Mom said I couldn’t stay but a minute. Bye, Ms. Campbell.”
“So, that’s Dr. Waters’ daughter?” Andrea said as Chloe skipped back across the restaurant. “She really is an adorable kid.”
“Isn’t she?” John grinned. “She’s great… What were you saying before? Some opportunity…?”
*****
“So, how are things going with you and Andrea?” George asked as John sat down beside him.
“She’s moving to Denver,” John said absently. He began shuffling through his notes. “They offered her a lead investigator position in the Southwestern Arson Division if she’d move out there.”
Well, easy come, easy go, George thought as he observed John’s apparent lack of concern. Maybe things hadn’t been as serious as they had seemed. He couldn’t resist teasing his romantically-challenged friend. “A few dates with John Grant and the woman has to move halfway across the country?” he said with a grin. “That’s a record even for you.”
“Actually, she asked me to come with her,” John said, looking up with a grin of his own.
“Oh? And what does she think you’d do in Colorado?”
“Bureau field office in Denver. Maybe I could work with Nate again. If they don’t have any openings right now there’s always the Denver PD. I’m not a bad detective, y’know.”
George’s smile faded as John spoke. “You’re seriously considering this, aren’t you?”
John shrugged. “Why not? There’s nothing in Atlanta that isn’t in Denver. They even have a major league franchise in every sport. And I’ve always wanted to try snow skiing.”
“Then take a vacation. You don’t have to move there.” George frowned. “What about us? What about the team?”
“I’d miss you,” John admitted. “But I have friends there, too.”
“What about your cabin?”
“I don’t get up there much these days, anyway,” John shrugged again then grinned suddenly. “You and Rich wouldn’t mind checking up on it every couple of months or so, would you? It has a nice view.”
George ignored the flip reply. “Then what about Sam?” he asked quietly.
John sobered and shook his head. “This isn’t about her,” he said. “It isn’t about her, or Bailey, or to be honest, really even about Andrea. It’s about me.” He looked at George with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “I’m doing this for me. I’ve been in Atlanta for almost eight years. It’s time for a change. I’m tired of nine month summers and never seeing snow. I’m tired of pine pollen changing the color of my car and humidity that could drown a guy... And I’m tired of being ignored.” He sighed and looked blindly down at the pages on the table. “It’s time to move on.”
“You’re just going to give up on her?”
“George, she hasn’t given me the time of day in three years. I should have given up a long time ago.”
George reluctantly dropped the conversation, realizing that it wouldn’t do any good. John was stubborn. And proud. And could be a complete idiot when he really tried to be. Right now he seemed to be suffering from a combination of all three. Pushing him now, even for his own good, would only make it worse.
*****
“So, that’s it?” Sam asked. “You’re just going to pick up and leave?”
She had been stunned when Grace had told her. She hadn’t believed it. She had to hear it from him herself. Even then she wasn’t sure she could believe it. She stared at him as they stood in the Bureau parking deck. She felt as if her heartbeat were echoing back from the concrete walls as she waited for his response.
“Yeah.”
“What about the team?”
“You’ve done fine without me before.”
“Last time you quit, John, I ended up arrested for murder.”
“I doubt something like that could happen twice,” he said with a small smile.
“What about Chloe? You know how fond she is of you.” She could see that she had struck a nerve as he looked away.
“Then maybe it’s better that I leave now... before she gets too attached.”
It wasn’t the answer she had been expecting. Before she could consider the wisdom of it her next protest, the one closest to her heart, the one she had wanted to ask as soon as she had heard of his intentions slipped out.
“What about me?”
His expression shifted into something unreadable. Or maybe just into something that she didn’t want to read.
“What about you?” he asked, his blue eyes narrowing as he looked up. “We’ve danced around this for three years, Sam. You’ve known from day one that I was interested, but you just kept pushing me away...”
“I couldn’t...”
“Why? Because of Jack?” She could hear the dark anger building in his voice. “Bull. That didn’t stop you from dating Coop. Or Rick. And hell, Sam, even with Jack locked up you’d rather date a damn lawyer than me. I get it, okay. You aren’t interested. I give up...”
“But...” She could feel him slipping farther away. “You’re… important to me. I wanted to protect you.”
“And I never wanted to be protected, Sam. All I wanted was to be with you.”
“But now you’re just going to walk away?”
“Why not? You’ve been walking away from me for three years. What do you expect me to do? I can’t wait forever for Ms. Woman-of-my-dreams to decide I’m good enough when Ms. Woman-of-reality has already decided that I’m great. I actually have a chance with Andrea, Sam. It might work out. It might not. But at least she’s giving me a chance.”
He looked down at her for a moment without speaking then turned and began to walk away.
“John…?” she called after him softly. It took every ounce of courage she had to form the words. “John… I… I love you.”
He stopped and stood motionless for an entire minute. When he turned back his expression was strangely sad. “So does she, Sam.”
She could only stare after him, speechless, as he left.
*****
“Look!” Andrea said, waving something in her hand as she walked into his apartment. She dropped her keys onto the coffee table and sat down beside him on the sofa. “Hawks’ tickets. Last home game before I move.”
“When is it?” he asked. He tried to sound interested, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He didn’t think she noticed.
“Tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow? I can’t,” he said. He winced inwardly at her astonished stare.
“What do you mean, you can’t? I already bought the tickets.”
“And I already have plans. You should have asked me first,” he added defensively.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Can you reschedule?” She smiled wryly. “Because they sure can’t.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. It’s not my gig to reschedule. It’s Chloe’s dance recital. I promised her I’d come.”
“Chloe?” She looked at him quizzically, trying to place the name.
He gave her a baffled look in return. “Chloe,” he repeated. He was sure that he had talked about the child at least a few times. “You met her, remember? Cute, blonde kid at the restaurant...”
“Dr. Waters’ daughter?”
“Right.”
“Oh.” She stared at him a moment longer then, to his surprise, began to laugh. “Who would ever believe that John Grant is blowing off a basketball game for ballet?”
“You’re not mad?” he asked warily.
“Just because you’d rather spend the evening with another woman’s child than with me? Why would I be mad?” Although she continued to smile he could see the faint annoyance in her eyes.
“I might not be here much longer,” he said. “It might be the last chance I get to do something like this for her.”
“There are a few too many ‘might’s in that, Grant.” She studied his face thoughtfully. “You still haven’t decided yet, have you?”
No, he thought. Not really. He thought he had. He had been certain that he had. He even had his transfer request papers in his desk at work. And then Sam… Damn, he swore silently. Why now? Why had she waited until now? Just when he’d almost managed to move on, literally… Did she really mean it, he wondered? Did she really love him… or was it merely a reflexive reaction to the fear of losing someone, anyone else?
“John?”
“Huh? Oh. Maybe we could do dinner Friday instead? Do you know anybody that you could give the tickets to?”
“Maybe I’ll keep them and just find someone else to go with me.”
He stared at her. She laughed.
“I’m kidding, John. I can probably give them with Alan in Ballistics. I was kind of hoping to get in one more game before I headed out to Colorado next week, but dinner Friday is just as good.”
They both realized that John had avoided her original question altogether.
*****
Bailey was halfway across the command center when he noticed the agent sitting at the conference table. He changed course without pause and headed toward the table.
“I hear you’re thinking about leaving.”
“Thinking about it,” John replied as he glanced up.
Bailey pulled out a chair and sat down to study the younger man. Despite the stack of case notes before him John seemed distracted. Small blue circles filled the margins of his papers. There was more indecision here than Sam had indicated, Bailey thought hopefully. When she had come to him she had seemed so certain that John was prepared to leave. Even if that had been the case yesterday, he thought, it didn’t seem to be set in concrete now. Although he suspected that John’s job had very little to do with his decision to stay or go it couldn’t hurt to remind him that Sam wasn’t the only one who would be affected by his departure.
“You’re one of the best agents I’ve ever worked with,” Bailey told him. “I’d hate to lose you. The team just wouldn’t be the same.”
“I wouldn’t think I’d be too difficult to replace,” John said lightly. “There are dozens of agents who would jump at the chance to work on the VCTF.”
Bailey grimaced. “And I’ve seen all their applications. Very few of them have your investigative background or experience. You have some unique talents, John... unorthodox, maybe, but irreplaceable. I asked you to join the team... I picked you out personally. I thought... No, I *know* you’re the best person for this job. I don’t want to have to settle for someone who’s just good. I told you before... I think you already are where you need to be. Besides,” he said, “I’d hate to have to look for someone else who can play the ‘bad cop’ *and* football.”
That got a faint smile from John.
“We’ve been through a lot these past few years,” Bailey continued. “It’s not just the agent I’d hate to lose.”
John’s expression was both surprised and grateful. He nodded slowly in acknowledgement.
“I know you’ll do the right thing, John.”
*****
John stood in the shuffling crowd and wondered if it was at all possible that he could attract Chloe’s attention without attracting Sam’s. He wasn’t really up to dealing with Sam tonight. He smiled as he saw Chloe heading toward him. Sam was nowhere in sight.
“You came!” Chloe exclaimed as she threw herself into his arms.
“Hey, fairy princess! You did great! And I told you I’d come. Didn’t you believe me?”
“Yeah, but…” She frowned slightly as he set her down. “I thought maybe… Mom’s mad at you, you know?”
“She is?” He cringed not just at the fact that Sam was mad but that Chloe had picked up on it.
“Yeah… no… I don’t know.” She gave him a puzzled look. “She’s really unhappy, so I guess she’s mad. Did you do something? Maybe if you apologize…”
“I’m not sure that would fix anything,” he muttered.
“Why not?”
John looked down at the stubborn child with her hands on her hips and could see her mother’s genes. “She hasn’t told you, yet, has she?”
“Told me what?”
He realized that he had been hoping to take the coward’s way out, hoping that Sam would have told her. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Chloe that he was leaving. He didn’t want to have to look into her big blue eyes and tell her that she was losing someone else. Might as well bite the bullet, he thought bitterly.
“Chlo… I… might… I’m probably moving.”
“Moving where?” she asked suspiciously.
“Denver… Colorado.”
“Colorado?” She stared at him with horror. “That’s a *million* miles away. You *can’t* move to Colorado!” Her eyes became impossibly wider. “*That’s* why Mom is mad at you. You can’t move, John! You can’t!” She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and buried her face against his stomach.
He hesitantly patted the little girl’s head. If it wasn’t one Waters making his life complicated, he thought miserably, it was the other.
*****
“I have a proposition.”
John looked up to see Sam standing beside his desk with a very determined expression on her face. He raised one eyebrow.
“One date,” she said. “One real date. If it fails miserably, you move to Colorado without looking back and neither of us have any regrets about what might have been.”
“One date? And if it *doesn’t* fail miserably?” he asked.
“Then we see what happens…”
“No,” he said firmly. He could see that she was startled by his response. “No deal. You know that’s loaded dice and not *nearly* enough payoff. I won’t stay with just a promise to ‘see what happens’. If you want a deal… if it doesn’t fail miserably, we keep dating.”
“John…”
“No.” He shook his head emphatically. “I won’t give up a chance with Andrea just to go back to being ‘friends’ with you. It isn’t fair. If you really want me to stay it has to be because you want a relationship. I won’t stay for anything less.”
Sam looked down at her hands. She took a deep breath and met his eyes again with renewed determination. “Okay.”
*****
“How’s your dinner?” she asked.
“Fine. Yours?”
“Good. It’s good.”
“Good.”
They stared at each other nervously for an instant then turned quickly back to their plates.
God, I feel like I’m fifteen again, John thought. This is insane. His gaze flickered up at Sam for a moment and he forgot to look down again. What am I doing here, he wondered? I know Andrea loves me. As he stared at Sam, however, he knew that the reciprocal wasn’t true. He didn’t love Andrea. He loved the woman sitting across the table from him. Whatever her feelings were for him he knew that he would still love her. He looked into the pair of eyes as blue… and as terrified as his own and held out his hand.
“Dance with me,” he said impulsively.
They moved stiffly at first. Slowly Sam softened, leaning her head against his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his waist. He brushed his cheek against her fair hair.
I can’t breathe, he thought suddenly. I can’t breathe! He felt his arms tighten and was powerless to stop them.
“Don’t leave me.”
For a moment he wasn’t certain which of them had spoken.
“John, don’t leave me,” she said again. She looked up at him with tears shining on her cheeks.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I never could.”
*****
“Hey. It’s me.”
“John!” She smiled as soon as she heard his voice. It faded almost instantly. She knew him well enough to sense in only three words that something was wrong. “John…?”
“Andrea… How are you settling in?”
“You aren’t coming, are you.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Andrea, I… It’s complicated...”
“Why?” “I… I’m sorry.”
“John, what happened? I thought you were ready to do this.” A terrible suspicion came to her. “It’s Sam Waters, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Samantha Waters. John, Coop knew how you felt about her. I think one of the reasons he said such nice things about you was in the hopes that he could talk someone else into vying for your attention… I thought I had managed to do that.” She stopped, choked. She didn’t want him to hear the tears in her voice. “I thought you really cared about me…”
“I do… I do care about you…”
“But you don’t love me,” she finished for him. His silence told her all she needed to know.
*****
“Come on, Sam. It’s one-thirty. I’m going to starve if you don’t close that folder and come to lunch with me.”
Sam tucked a falling strand of hair behind one ear and frowned. “Didn’t you just eat a piece of Tony’s birthday cake?”
“Doesn’t count. That’s not real food.”
“I’m sorry, John, but I have to finish this. Today. Before five.”
“What about dinner then? After you finish, of course.”
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Things were still a little awkward between them, but they were working on it. “I have a better idea,” she said slowly. “Take me to a basketball game.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Seriously?” he asked when he could breathe again.
“Yes. Seriously. I want you to take me to a basketball game. Hawks, right?”
He wiped at his eyes, still chuckling. “Why? You hate sports.”
“I don’t hate sports. I just don’t understand them. I want you to start explaining them to me.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because… I know how much you love them. If we’re seriously going to try this long-term relationship thing I have a feeling that I’m going to be hearing a lot about them. I think I’d like to know what you’re talking about.”
“You’d really be willing to learn about basketball?”
“John, to make this work… I’d be willing to learn how to *play* basketball. I know that I want to be with you, and if sports are a part of that then…”
He stared at her in wonder. “Yeah,” he nodded finally and smiled. “Okay… They don’t play tonight, though. Well, they do… but it’s in Detroit.”
“Is it televised? Maybe… maybe you could come by the house tonight? I know Chloe would love to see you, too.”
“That sounds pretty good.” He nodded again. “It starts at seven-thirty.”
“Then come at seven?”
“It’s a date.”
Yes, she thought as she watched him leave. It certainly is.
END