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years ago, and she had much more affection for it than any man she’d had the misfortune of dating since.   All of San Francisco was starting to sour in her mind, just like Whispering Pines had once.   The back seat of the car was piled high with bags and trunk, a reminder that this trip back home was as much a retreat as anything else.  
    I’m no different from Susan , she thought.   Running when the going gets tough.
    But why back to Whispering Pines? There was less work here, certainly less stimulation, and, if Blake Spanner was any indication, the pickings here in Whispering Pines weren’t going to be any more impressive.   Boy, Blake had gotten on her nerves.   That must be the reason she kept thinking of him.  

    *********

    “Is that a duck?”
    Kate lifted her head from her pillow, her speech half slurred by fatigue.   It was about two in the morning, and she’d gotten maybe an hour’s worth of sleep since getting to bed at ten.  
    To think some people went to the country for peace and quiet! Crickets were fiddling right outside her window, the mosquitoes buzzed too.   June bugs bashed against the screen that blocked the bedroom window (thank God her old room was facing away from the road, where no rocks had found it.) Most unnerving were the coyotes howling out low and frightening songs, and their equally maddening responses.  
    Lower and stranger were the frogs, but it was the duck that finally made Kate sit up in frustration.   She glanced out the window, and caught a quick glimpse of the white feathered nuisance just outside the door before it disappeared, quacking all the while.
    In her high-rise apartment in San Francisco, she was above a lot of the noise of the city, and if she was bothered by aviary, it sure did not quack.   The thing should be asleep, Kate reasoned, or maybe roasting on a spit or flying south or...
    She gasped as she saw a light flicker on the ground, a lantern-held candlelight that shuddered in the wind.   It moved along the brush, but whatever hand held it was hidden in the overgrowth.  
    Kate caught her breath, then forced herself to relax.   It was surely nothing - with the house so close to the woods, a man out there probably had just lost his way.   Once he saw the road and could reorient himself, he’d be able to head back to where he was going.  
    But wait. He seemed to be coming this way. Suddenly, he dashed across the clearing towards the house, but just before Kate could see who it was, the flame he carried was doused.   The world was so dark out there - Kate could barely make out shapes and movements.   For just a moment, the cacophony of nature was holding its breath to see what would happen next.  
    Her heart was beating like a drum. Was this real? Or was she still half asleep and dreaming?
    “It’s nothing, you big crybaby,” Kate said, her breath coming fast.   And then she heard the subtle scraping down the stairs, and the unmistakable creak of a door.   Footsteps tromped down beneath her.   Someone was in the house.  
    Paralysis hit.   Kate was so frightened she couldn’t move.   She wanted to pretend she was somewhere else.   But she wasn’t, and she knew that.   She also knew she couldn’t very well wait in her bed for the intruder—obviously an axe murderer after all. Carefully, trying to hold back the scream that wanted to climb up her throat, Kate stepped down on the carpeted floor.   The bedroom she’d had as a child did not seem to have changed since she was gone except for the dust, and she could still find her way around the place in the dark without banging up her shins.  
    She tiptoed to her purse. Downstairs, she heard heavy boots and the sound of metal clanging.   She opened her purse and spilled its contents onto the floor, where it would land quieter.   A panoply of junk fell out, including a small taser gun she’d purchased and never used, and her cell phone.   She grabbed them both.   One roll of lipstick