The heat was extreme, needling in steaming rivulets at the strike point on the back of his neck. His forearm rested on the front of the shower stall, forehead on his arm as he merely stood there, feeling the sluice of water down his back.

It didn't matter how hot the water was, or how long he'd stayed in it…

…he still couldn't seem to get his hands clean.

There was no funeral, no body, no ashes, nothing to pay respect to. As with nothing she had existed, she'd disappeared into it; the hospital denying she was ever admitted, or even there. His argument with the desk clerk was still fresh in his ears; dried blood had still been on his clothes.

The frustration in the days following had compounded. His 'official' report reflected events he'd experienced in relation to 'Mrs. DeMonte'. The interviews by departments he'd never heard of had been endless after the scene he'd made at the hospital. Files were gone from the lab. Everything was gone. Ecklie had suspended him with pay for insubordination, psych eval, and put him on mandatory leave; but somehow he knew it was his way of giving him time to recover, even though the man was still an ass.

He was left with nothing but a ghost, unanswered questions, the guilt that his actions killed her, and the fear their last encounter had brought.

…………………'who else did you condemn to a death sentence…?'

The sadness in her eyes had been heartbreaking. He had seen fear, not fear for her own life, but her fear for his. Would she still have been afraid for their lives? Should he still be afraid?

…………………'I can shoot you before you pull the trigger…'

Steam was drawn into his lungs as he pulled in a deep breath, eyes parted slightly, feeling the heaviness of droplets on his lashes.

…………………'no matter how fast you are… I'm faster…'

Faster.

Fast enough to kill her.

…………………'you're a kid… a little boy with a gun…'

Teeth clenched so hard his jaw popped. He reached to turn off the water; his first day back to work after a week; thankfully not fired.

The ride there was routine; people said hello to him, he smiled in return. Everything felt muted, surreal, and mechanical as he worked. He stared at the computer screen, face unreadable as he tapped a yellow highlighter on his notepad.

He looked up at the radio, silence where music had been droning quietly in the background. The CD in the player had run out. It wasn't his, Sarah McLachlan; it was just there and he didn't want to work in silence; too much to think about. He didn't feel like finding something else to listen to, he didn't feel like doing much of anything.

He squinted to look at the status bar on the stereo across the room. It had finished the last song and was still playing, the silence hanging as the seconds moved on. Instead of getting up, he sat quietly listening to the words mixed with a melancholy piano.

Ghost track.

Fitting.

The words stung at him.

Snapping the cap onto the highlighter with his thumb, he tossed it onto the desk and pinched the bridge between his eyes. They were blurry. He couldn't get away from it. Every night since then he'd felt as if he could feel her watching. Every time he drove it felt like she was in the car next to him: faces in crowds, voices at the gas station, the shadows at night in his room. Her voice lingered in his head: their last conversation, the sadness in her eyes. He felt responsible: he could have aimed better; he could have thought quicker… he sighed. The what-ifs could go on forever, but he would always feel responsible for her death.

Mixed emotions hung on their last moments together. A glimpse of something greater had been so apparent; someone trapped in a freight train of the greater good as if the value of her own life was worthless. Is that what she thought of him? Is that why she'd used him? For a brief second he'd seen beyond the mask and it had terrified him. As she had seen a shred of herself in him, he'd also seen that same shred in her. Both were willing to lay themselves down for the greater good without conscious thought. And he couldn't stop thinking her death was his fault. His hands ran over his face, no matter what his superiors said, he wasn't ready to come back.

A presence had lingered in the back of his brain for several moments. A soft knock caught his attention on the doorframe. He looked up.

"Do you want to get some lunch?" Grissom asked quietly.

He squared his jaw, quiet, flicking his finger at a pen sitting on the notepad. Picking it up, he began to write silently, shaking his head.

"Sara and I would like to take you to lunch," he paused. "You need to get out of here."

Nick nodded, setting the pen down to slide the mouse. "Just let me finish this." He clicked a few more moments on the computer and logged out.

Sara watched Grissom and Nick move down the hall and finished her own writing, putting a decisive period at the end of the sentence. She pursed her lips, a small smile sliding over her features. Gathering all the papers together they went into a folder, pictures, music, everything she had found.

She followed them out to Grissom's truck, folder in hand, jumping into the backseat. Nick was deathly quiet as they drove, watching the lights slide by. They stopped at a regular diner, sitting at a half-booth near the back. Sara and Grissom sat on the cushioned seat; Nick sat in one of the chairs on the opposite side. The waitress came by and they ordered.

Silence.

Nick traced the water circle on the table with his finger, finally taking a sip from the glass. Sara sipped her hot chocolate, sliding the folder toward Nick. He opened the folder, a teenage picture of Kara sitting on top. It looked like a candid snapshot from a yearbook, the top of a violin's peg box and scroll just visible in her fingers at the bottom of the photo. A boy was giving her bunny ears.

His chair screeched slightly, the legs of his chair sliding back as he got up; one hand suddenly rifled forward and backward through his hair. "I came back to work to stop thinking about this," his voice was tight as his eyes flew to the picture again, then to Sara accusingly.

"Nick, sit down please," Grissom said calmly. "Let us explain."

Nick's face was defensive.

"Please."

Nick licked his lips, pressing his them together as he set his jaw and sat down. "I filed my official report, there's nothing else to tell."

"I've read the 'official' report," Grissom started. "We thought… we could fill in the blanks."

"Fill in the blanks?" he looked up through his eyebrows, lips still pursed tightly.

They were both silent a moment.

"You need questions answered," Sara started, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, "and so do we."

"I need…" he bit his bottom lip, drawing it out slowly. "I just need some more time," his voice was tense. "Excuse me," he said through a choked throat, getting up.

"Nick, don't go," Sara said suddenly.

"You don't get it do you?" he glared at both of them with narrowed eyes, his hand rifling through his hair again.

"We understand what you've been through, god knows you've been through a lot before but," Sara started.

"But this is different," he interrupted. "I was so buffaloed, so blinded by what I thought I had to do, I didn't realize what needed to be done," hands were defensively on his hips. He had begun to point accusingly at them, face finally softening as he ran a hand over it.

"You thought you had to protect her," Sara said quietly.

"So did you, so did everyone," he lamented, staring at the floor a moment. His voice became incredibly soft. "Look, she died because I didn't play my cues right. She died because I couldn't let it go, I couldn't follow protocol."

"She died because of who she chose to be. She knew the dangers and accepted the consequences of her actions," Grissom said quietly. "Sit down, please."

"To learn what? That I killed a real person instead of some military machine?" he said quietly, gesturing toward the picture. "I'm sorry but I can't do that."

"You deserve to know what she wanted to tell you," Grissom finished. "Between us, there is a completed picture that is still eluding us. A warning, something she wanted us to know."

He looked confused. "What are you talking about?"

Grissom gestured quietly to the chair again. "Please, sit."

He sank slowly to his seat with a seeth through his nose, taking a drink of the water. He couldn't decide if he even wanted to know. "Every time I close my eyes I see blood, and I've been trying for a week to connect the dots between the moment you asked me to process her clothes and the moment she stopped breathing," Nick said gently, setting his hands on the table and folding them.

Sara's eyes looked concerned, her hands reached across the table and patted his folded hands gently.

"The story isn't finished," Grissom said.

Nick's pause was long, eyes intensely dark as he looked up at them through his brows. "I don't think so either."

The three of them were silent, contemplating the implications.

Grissom leaned back, thinking. "Desdemona," he said simply. "I asked who she was. She answered Desdemona."

Nick blinked at him, not understanding.

"Shakespeare, a tragedy. What defines a tragedy?" Grissom thought out loud. He'd been waiting a week to finish her riddle.

"The hero dies," Sara took a drink of her hot chocolate.

Grissom nodded. "Desdemona is a submissive character in Othello. She plays the meek wife, but also an intensely bold woman who ultimately dies for her crime of being too audacious. She is killed by the very person she so desperately defends, Othello; a man manipulated by the evil Iago into thinking she is tainted, only to ultimately forgive him for his shortcoming."

Nick's eyes narrowed. "She knew she was going to die."

"And she knew how it was going to happen," Grissom's face was slightly curious as he watched Nick soak it in.

"The moment we stepped into her foyer, she knew people were unintentionally involved," Grissom took a sip from his mug. "She did everything she could to keep us out of it, and we were just too… inquisitive. So she looped us around so tight in our own questions, she played us like a… fiddle?"

"And I couldn't leave well enough alone." Nick's fingers tentatively touched the folder again, picking up the photo. "We stumbled into her world. She hadn't expected to end up in the hospital. Damn, how could I have been so blind?" he set it down again. "She was trying to get me off the trail in the hospital, send us packing to keep us out of it."

"And when she realized there was nothing she could do to stop us, her mission became damage control. The moment she got you to lie for her, was the moment she knew she could save your life," Sara watched him, the thoughts churning through his face.

The silence was welcome, his brain calm for the first time in a week. Dark eyes wandered over the photo, he had seen a glimpse of this person, from a better time. Soft freckles were lit on cheeks that had spent time out of doors; a high school senior key twinkled around her neck as subtle as the smile on the corners of her lips

"Who was she?" he heard his voice ask.

"Literal or official?" Sara responded gently.

Nick put his finger on the picture. "This person."

"Her birth certificate says Rorye McKinna, she's now twenty nine; that's a picture from high school," Sara started, fingers wrapped around her hot chocolate. "After Ecklie pulled us from the case, we got curious; found anything and everything we could, knowing we might need it."

He rolled the name over in his brain. "Where'd you get her name?" he asked quietly.

"Yet there is granted us no place to rest; we vanish, we fall - the suffering humans - blind from one hour to another, like water thrown from cliff to cliff, for years… our brethren, into the unknown depths… vanish…" Grissom said carefully. "Mrs. DeMonte's mantra. She talked to herself. Everything she did was a clue for us, but that… her compulsion to speak to herself was wholly real. A comfort mechanism, a way to calm and center herself when things were out of her control."

Nick pursed his lips. He'd seen her do it at the hospital, and on the mountain.

Grissom's eyes lit up, "That led me to believe it was induced by a childhood trauma. She tested my familiarity with Emerson, after that it was a matter of strategically dropped clues. Words to a very distinct classical song signified a time frame and a parent occupation, the slip of an accent gave us a place."

"We took that, and did some research. It took a lot of digging, but we were able to connect the clues with a bit of guessing and dumb luck. She was adopted. Open adoption, once she turned eighteen her records became public. She was born in Ireland, her mother died from cancer very young, her father was shot to death on his way to a performance with her in the car. A couple in the U.S. adopted her; they were killed in a car wreck a year after she graduated high school," Sara continued.

"Her father, the violinist," Nick said.

Grissom smiled.

Sara leaned back in the booth. "Her real father was shot to death on his way to a concert with her when she was eight. The car they were traveling in was wrecked, but she survived. Eyewitnesses in the newspaper article said she tried to pull her father out of the burning car and actually got him out before the car finally exploded from the gas tank. She spent months in a hospital with shrapnel injuries to her hands and arms, burns.

Nick thought a moment, taking another drink of water. "Who shot her father?"

Sara leaned up and slid the folder toward her, flipping through some of the papers. "That's the only thing we can't find. Cold case, no leads. She was adopted, came to America. Graduated top of her class, excelling in literature, music, math and science, a key member of a local skeet shooting club; but apparently couldn't keep herself out of trouble." She smiled slightly. "She had a principal rap sheet a mile long. One interesting one of note was she picked the lock on the boys locker room and stole all the pants to the opposing team's football uniforms, she got caught after her boyfriend ratted her out."

The corners of Nick's lips curved up slightly, eyes showing a glint of amusement.

"After her adoptive parents were killed, she disappeared."

"And reappears a decade later with scars and death," Nick took a deep breath. "I killed her, because I couldn't bear the thought of her abused by another man. I'm Othello."

Their silence was heavy.

"She made this choice from the moment she chose to involve us. She knew what she was doing, and she knew the consequences of her actions." Grissom reassured him. "She was willing to do anything to keep you safe,"

He'd heard that before. "Who was responsible for keeping her safe?" Nick swallowed.

The food was set carefully on the table in front of them.

"All this information is just facts," Nick said, pushing the food around with his fork. "She spent all that time with DeMonte to get close to one man. The guy who shot her was her target all along. She saw me as an opportunity and she took it, she used me to get him to come to her after she realized I was involved beyond saving. Why then leave you all the clues?"

Grissom stopped his fork, staring at Nick. "Her father's death," Grissom said absently. "She led us to her father's death, the second half of the riddle."

"Why?" Sara asked.

They chewed on their food thoughtfully. Nick was silent; he couldn't answer that question either. He knew what he saw; he knew what he felt in his gut, and her insistence on motive for her actions was burned into his memory.

…………………'I don't kill people… I kill killers…'

Her words stung him from beyond, and involuntary shiver across his shoulders as he looked at his two friends.

"Because the man she was after was the man that killed her father," the words barely came from Nick's lips.

It hung in the air, no one wanted to touch it.

"You think he's dead?" Sara finally asked, her voice muted.

"First rule of one of the greatest literary forms in the world," Grissom started. "No one is ever dead until you see the body, even then it's still up for question."

"Shakespeare again?" Sara asked.

"Comic books," Grissoms face quirked.

"This one's on me," Sara grinned, rolling her eyes, picking up the folder and sliding out of the booth to go up to the counter and pay the bill.

Grissom wiped his lips on a napkin and took a folded envelope from the pocket of his shirt, holding it in his fingers a moment before handing it over to Nick. He understood the gravity that was weighing on Nick's brain, not willing to divulge it with anyone else yet. His comment to Sara had been in jest, but the intent was purely serious.

"This came in the mail for you today."

Nick took it, setting down his fork. He looked at it in his hand for a moment, not recognizing the return address. His lips pursed, eyes hooded in deep thought as his brows furrowed in question.

"Do you know what's in here?" he asked.

Grissom nodded, "Something only you would understand."

Nick's thumb slid under the edge, sliding out a piece of paper, unfolding it carefully. Something fell out of it. He looked at the blank piece of paper, then the return address again; feminine handwriting very prominently scrolled. Reaching down and picking the other item up off the floor, he looked confused.

It was a band-aid.

He looked again at the bogus return address, looking to Grissom, the confusion sliding away from the corners of his eyes as he resisted the urge to scan every female face in the diner.

Grissom pursed his lips.

Nick flicked the band-aid in his fingers, reaching for his wallet. He paused before he slipped the band-aid into it, changing his mind. Lifting his ID badge, he nestled it behind his picture. A totem. Perhaps not enough to stop a bullet, but the thought it was there straightened his shoulders a bit.

His body tingled, face unreadable as a boyishly wicked smile coursed over his lips, subdued as he pursed his lips thoughtfully. He took the last bite of his lunch, sliding the plate forward.

The tingling slowly gave way to a sense of dread. The urge to look over his shoulder replaced the small twinkle of joy, followed by a realization of inevitable certainty. Somehow he couldn't believe the man, Ricker, was dead. If he was alive, who stood between him and the threat he'd made? He could never forgive himself if anything happened to his friends; he'd warned the feds, told everyone everything he knew in the endless interviews.

They'd assured him he was safe.

He suddenly didn't believe them.

"Perhaps then, we need a guardian angel," Grissom raised his brow and knocked back the rest of his mug. He stood, moving toward the truck.

Nick licked his lips, tossing down a tip before he stood. "I think we already have one," he said under his breath, following them out.

((Thanks for all your help and candid reviews. Hope to start another adventure soon. References to Sarah McLachlan's ghost track "Possession" off the album "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy". Quotes courtesy of Ralph Waldo Emerson's; "Essay VIII Heroism", and Brahms' "Schicksalslied"- The Song of Fate. And of course, character references to Shakespeare's (Billy Wigglesword's) "Othello".))