I really, really, really, should NOT be starting another story. Alas, I am.

Nancy:

It had been a stressful spring. Honestly, it had been a stressful year. Case after case people died and their surviving family put the case in my hands. I was the one they trusted to set things right. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but recently it seemed like the entire crime worlds was coming down me with vengeance.

I'd been working on a case with the San Francisco Police Department that had hit way to close to home. A suspected serial killer had been stalking the city for nearly a month before I was called in. The killer, dubbed 'The Phantom,' lurked throughout the city, picking his victims seemingly at random, leaving no clues aside from a dove gray rose in the hands of each of his stabbed victims.

The talented detectives of the SFPD had worked long hours to track the killer, but they couldn't seem to make any headway on the case. As the bodies piled up, their frenzied search grew to a citywide manhunt and I was called in. Just when it seemed like they were never going to catch the Phantom, I made a break in the case.

I found the florist who grew those hauntingly beautiful gray roses. Harper DePaulett, forty, overweight, single and gay, had become our prime suspect. He had openly bragged about selling the killer's roses, saying that the killings were good for business. When two patrolmen were sent to collect DePaulett for questioning, he had killed one and critically injured another before nearly getting away.

Unfortunately for him, I accompanied the officers and was waiting outside when he stumbled out of the building.

I can still see his face as I raised my borrowed weapon, like a rat in a cage, I thought as I calmly told him to get facedown on the ground with his hands on his head. Leering at me, he yanked a gun out of his jacket and pointed it at me. The gunshot resounded across the empty parking lot in the setting sun. I can still see his face as the bullet hit him square in the heart.

Logically, I know he was dead before he hit the ground, but I his eyes were focused on mine until his head hit the asphalt. It was the first time I'd ever killed someone in all of my twenty years.

The whole city had congratulated me; I had killed a menace and a devil, a man bent on killing the innocent. Had any of the nineteen men and women he killed deserved to die? they asked me. She should be glad she killed the scum, they told me.

This was true…so why did I have a knot the size of California in my throat every time someone told me how good she was. The city had wanted to put together an award ceremony after the officer's funeral, but I'd firmly declined. I didn't want a medal for taking another human being's life, no matter how evil that person may have been.

Flying home had a month and a half after leaving, I felt like a completely different person, one I really didn't like. The warm May air hit my face when I stepped out of O'Hare, but somehow I didn't feel ready for summer.

I spent a week moping, sleeping, eating and fighting with my boyfriend. We were now at a 'Dating, but still seeing other people' stage apparently, something he'd forgotten to mention to me.

We had a huge fight over it, hardcore screaming, throwing things, cursing, and the eventual ultimate blow up.

"STOP IT! Okay, Ned, just STOP! I can't take anymore of this!"

He made an annoyed sound with his lips, "Oh, you can't take it anymore? What exactly is it? Me? Us? The stress your stupid job puts on you? 'Cause if it's the job, I agree, I can't take it anymore either."

"Stop trying to turn this back on me, you've been cheating on me."

He shrugged, "Guess I got lonely, considering my girlfriend is never around."

"So you just starting dating somebody else?"

"It appears that way."

"What is wrong with you? Why are you being so- Why are you doing this?"

He locked eyes with me, gaging my reaction, "I'm tired of this, you leaving and then coming back a different person."

That stung, "Alright Ned, I can fix that. We're over. Done. You're free. Go back to your little honey and have a great rest of your life."

He protested but I walked away and didn't look back.

After the breakup I was even more mopey, and that's when Dad suggested I go to the summerhouse in northern Quebec. He suggested two weeks, but I morphed it into all summer. The sparsely populated town where the cottage was would be perfect for resting up in mind and body.

A friend of my dad's had lived on the Hudson Bay in Ciel, a tiny town nearly a thousand miles from United States-Canada boarder. For years, Pierre Gustave's home in the nearly abandoned old logging town had been the vacation destination for the Dad and I on many occasions. The tranquil setting had been full of firefly-summers and warm navy, star filled skies. When Pierre had passed away two years before, he had left the little house to the Dad. We'd only been up to the cabin a handful of times since Pierre died, opting to instead rent it out. This summer, however, our steady renter had moved away, leaving the place empty for the upcoming summer.

After making my plans, I packed a box with books I'd been planning to read, movies I wanted to watch, beach towels, sunscreen, flip-flops, tank tops, and shorts. I placed my laptop and cell phone inside of my desk drawer and firmly locked it. The cabin had a landline, that's all I was going to need…and unlike my cell phone, only a select few people have the cabin number.

And those select few do not including Ned Nickerson.

The last thing that was stuffed into I three boxes and one suitcase was a calendar, which was scribbled all over with relatives and friends who were coming up for a visit. Folding the sizable check from the city of San Francisco for my work on the Phantom case into my purse, I slammed the trunk with a strong sense of finality.

Throwing my bag on to the passenger seat of my blue Mustang, kissed Dad and Hannah goodbye late on the afternoon of May twenty-seventh. I didn't look back as I pulled out of the driveway and headed towards the highway.

These next three months were about rest and recuperation and not looking back on the stress that's been going on as of late.

I will not find any mysteries in a town with a five hundred year round population and only a hundred or so more in tourists. And if I should happen to come across a crime, I will not peruse it. I will let the local law enforcement handle it.

Or, that's what I told myself.

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~Striker