I looked up from picking the black crust off my burned marshmallow. It took a moment to remember which story someone had been recounting.

“The Don Valley rapist? Yep. I wasn’t in that division, though.”

The corporate trio turned to look at me.

“You were a cop?” one—Bruce—said.

I nodded.

“Retired,” Mitch amended.

Bruce laughed. “Retired? Already? You can’t be much more than thirty—let me guess. Struck it big in the dotcom explosion, and got out before the implosion, right?”

I laughed with him.

“The rest of us just come out here to look, drool and dream,” Mitch said. “Seven more years, Stafford, and I’m buying that woodlot down the road, building a lodge of my own and putting you out of business. You watch.”

A few others joined in, joking about retirement plans, partly in earnest, partly to steer conversation away from me. I appreciated the gesture, but one of the first lessons I’d learned when I’d opened the lodge was that anyone who cared to find out my past would.

If my name and face didn’t tweak their memory, it would tweak another guest’s. Or, failing that, they only had to stop at Mullins General Store down the road and mention where they were staying. Ever since her husband had tried to get me to pay my renovation bill in currency of another kind, Lisa Mullins had decided it was her sworn duty to ensure all my guests knew of my past. “You’re staying with Nadia Stafford? Oh, she’s such a sweet girl, isn’t she? Hard to believe she’s a…”

As I leaned toward the flames, I could almost feel Lisa’s breath on my neck as she whispered, “Killer.”

I couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts banged around in my head, so I went outside and wandered the paths close to the lodge. The night was cold, crisp, the same fresh air I’d fantasized about the night before, sitting outside New York. Yet here was the real thing, and it did nothing to clear my head or lift my thoughts.

If I could help find this killer, I wanted to. But did I dare?

This job could be a dream come true, a chance to set my dark side at rest, douse the embers for good. Or would it? What had happened to me has happened to countless others, and how many of them had turned into professional killers? We are the sum total of a lifetime of experiences, and while there may be those events that change our lives forever, they are still tempered and molded by all the rest.