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And she hadn’t come here without doing a little research. The current campus site on Chestnut Hill had been built in the early 1900s and featured examples of English Gothic architecture that Anne found fascinating. She’d spent countless hours wandering the walking paths that meandered through lush lawns and tall maples and evergreens to stare at the buildings.
There was something so…moving about the majestic structures with their cathedral-like shapes made of stone and mortar. Where she’d grown up houses were made of wood or tin. When she’d moved to the city, she’d found only a concrete jungle that both intimidated and awed her.
In this New England setting, she was content with her life. No matter how short her time here would be. She smothered the anger that sprouted. What was done was done, she had to learn to live with it.
A movement at the far end of the long, empty hallway made her push away from the wall. A man stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t make out his features. He didn’t look tall enough or broad enough to be the professor. She squinted. “Professor McClain?”
“Yes?” a deep voice came from right beside her shoulder.
She jumped with a squeak and whirled around to face the professor. Tall, overbearing—and for some reason comforting. “What…?” Her gaze swung back to the shadows. No one was there. “Did you see that guy?”
“Who?” His gazed moved past her toward the stairwell.
Foreboding chased down her spine. She hadn’t imagined the man in the shadows, she was sure of it. She tightened her hold on her purse, feeling the outline of her cell phone. Her lifeline. “No one, I guess.”
Behind his glasses, Patrick’s dark blue eyes regarded her with puzzlement. “Are you okay?”
She liked his eyes, liked how a darker shade of brown rimmed the irises, like layers of rich chocolate cake. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Do you always sneak up on people?”
One side of his mouth twitched. “You sound like my sister-in-law, Kate. She’s always accusing me of sneaking up on her. I can’t help it if I’m light on my feet.”
Anne gave his long, lean frame a once-over. “Dance classes?” she joked.
He shrugged and she thought his cheeks turned pink but in the waning light coming from the high window above the classroom doors she wasn’t sure. “My mother thought her boys should be graceful.”
“Cool mom,” she commented as she bent to pick up the computer box. “Where I come from, boys would rather be hog-tied than sent to dance class.”
“Here, allow me,” Patrick said and bent as well, his hands covering hers on the box. Warm, big and strong.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
Slowly she withdrew her hands and straightened, aware of a funny little hitch in her breathing. Must still be the adrenaline from the man in the shadows making her forget herself.
“Al—L.A.” She’d almost slipped up. That wouldn’t be good.
“You’re a long away from home.”
He had no idea.
“Uh—” Patrick muttered as he stood with the box in his arms. “The door keys are in my pocket.”
“No way am I going fishing,” she stated and backed up a step. Three months ago, she would have expected that sort of line from practically every man she dealt with but not here, not now. Not the professor!
Patrick pinned her with a droll stare that made her think perhaps she’d overreacted. He balanced the box on one knee while he dug the keys from his coat pocket and held them out to her. “Here.”
Taking the keys as embarrassed heat crept into her cheeks, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Following Patrick inside, she looked around the office, not surprised to see a clean, clutter-free desk, faced by two perfectly aligned chairs and a filing cabinet with neatly written labels on each drawer. All button-down and tidy, just like the professor.
Patrick set the box on the corner of the desk. “I’ve backed up all my files. Twice.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? On what?”
He went around the desk and opened a drawer to produce two floppy disks.
“Unfortunately your new computer doesn’t take floppies.”
His complexion paled. “It doesn’t?”
He really was technologically challenged, which she found endearing. “CDs and thumb drives. Tomorrow I’ll bring in a portable USB floppy drive.”
He took his glasses off and began rubbing the lenses with a cloth. “That will solve the problem?”
“I’ll have to save the files onto a thumb drive.” She plucked a silver letter opener from the pen holder on the desk and went to work opening the box. “Until then, we can fire her up and see how she runs.”
“You’ve given my computer a female gender?”
“We can call your computer a boy if you’d rather.” She tugged on the white foam protector and slid the black notebook computer out of the box.
“The female pronoun is fine, like a ship. Just as potentially deadly and much too unpredictable.”
“The same way guys view women,” she stated and reached in the box for the cables.
“Excuse me?”
His affronted expression made her hold up her hand and amend her statement. She supposed it wasn’t a fair statement, nor was it completely true. “Not all, just some.”
He set his glasses back on his nose. “You’re not old enough to have such a bleak outlook on the male gender.”
She blinked. “Not old enough?”
“You’re what, all of twenty?”
Her mouth twitched. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Though I’m not sure you meant it as such. And I’m actually thirty.” She ignored the fact that her current driver’s license stated otherwise. What would it matter if he knew the truth?
He cocked his head. “Really? Indeed.”
“Yes, indeed.” She plugged the cable and cords into the right spots. “Here we go.” She opened the lid of the laptop and began acquainting him with all the bells and whistles.
“So I can actually write on here with this little stick? And the computer types it in?”
She nodded, finding his amazement and wonder quite charming. “The stick is called a stylus and yes, the computer converts your writing to text. And,” she said with a dramatic flare, “the lid folds all the way back so it looks more like a clipboard than a laptop, which makes writing on the pad that much easier.”
“I think I’m going to like this.”
Though there was a smile in his voice, his stoic expression didn’t change. Odd. And odder still, she so wanted to see his smile.
She picked up her purse. “I’ll leave you to play with your new toy. I’ll come back tomorrow and download your files off that dinosaur.” She gestured to the archaic computer taking up most of his desk.
He walked her to the door. “Thank you. I appreciate your up-to-date knowledge.”
She hid a smile. He’d have a coronary if he knew that the basics of her knowledge came from a year of living with Rob, the computer geek, and the rest from the stack of manuals she’d been devouring over the last few weeks.
She was nothing if not a quick study. Would have been nice if the skill had helped with her acting career.
Moving to the Big Apple at seventeen to follow her dream of the Broadway stage hadn’t worked out so well. She’d been just another pretty girl among a thousand other pretty girls, some with talent, others not so much. She’d been somewhere in the middle, but playing bit walk-on roles hadn’t paid the bills.
Her dream of the theater had faded and reality had set in. Clearly she’d had to adjust her plans and had found a way, besides acting, to survive.
But then again, the professor clearly didn’t suspect she was anything other than what she presently appeared to be. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad actress after all. That had to count for something.
“Uncle Raoul.”
Raoul Domingo stared at his nephew Carlos and tightened his grip on the phone at his ear. He wanted to hit something or someone. But being incarcerated meant he had to hold on to his temper.
At least until he got out of the joint.
He still couldn’t believe that female cop and her pretty boy partner had had the gall to bust in to his home in the middle of his dinner and cart him off in handcuffs.
As if he’d ever see the inside of a courtroom. No way! His men would make sure of that.
And then Raoul would settle the score with the two of them—especially the lady cop.
The Plexiglas window separating him from his nephew was dirty and scratched from years of standing between visitors and the inmates of New Jersey State Prison. Knowing their conversation was probably being recorded, he chose his words carefully so they couldn’t incriminate him. He asked, “Have you taken care of that little detail?”
“Not yet.”
Carlos squirmed under Raoul’s furious stare. Raoul wanted to reach through the glass and wrap his hands around his nephew’s throat. “Get it done.”
“We’re working on it,” Carlos assured him, his pockmarked face growing red.
“Work harder.”
Carlos nodded. His gaze shifted around and he cupped a hand around the receiver. “We’ve got another issue.”
Raoul’s nostrils flared. “What?”
“My—uh, friend says there’s another pigeon in the nest.”
Acid churned in Raoul’s gut. Another witnesss? How could that be? Trinidad had sworn the hotel was secure the night they’d visited Versailles, but apparently Raoul had been mistaken in trusting Trinidad. The man better come through now or he was dead meat.
“Tri—”
Raoul put his finger to his lips. “No names.”
Carlos grimaced. “Yeah. Uh, we’re out tracking.”
Raoul wanted out of this stink hole so bad he could smell the tantalizing scent of freedom on his nephew. “Happy hunting.”
TWO
Patrick paced the thick brown carpet of his office while the clicking of Anne’s nails on the keyboard drilled into his head. She certainly knew her way around a computer and she seemed much more competent than his original assessment. Even so, it rankled knowing someone else had the power to destroy his work.
He didn’t like uncertainty. He liked being in control. Had grown used to it since the day after his father died.
He’d become the man of the house, the guy his younger siblings turned to for advice or help and whom his mother relied upon to keep their world rotating even if the axis was now a bit skewed.
Patrick worried about his siblings, though Brody, who should be the one most messed up, had found a wonderful wife and now lived a great life. He’d somehow accepted the past and learned to live with the tragedy of their father’s death.
Ryan had been too young to have been traumatized by their father’s murder, but Patrick could see how much not having a father had pushed Ryan into his quest for material wealth. Patrick had a feeling Ryan thought having money would give him what he’d lacked as a child. Patrick wasn’t so sure.
And then there was little Megan. Patrick adored his sister, but she most of all was messed up and not merely from the trauma of losing her dad, but she suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, which was a bad combination with her fiercely independent spirit. As soon as she could, she’d left home to find her own place in the world.
Sometimes Patrick felt lost without his siblings underfoot. But he’d found a way to express his feelings in his work.
What if Anne lost something despite the CD and the little device she called a thumb drive? What if she inadvertently opened one of his files and read his writings? Would she laugh?
He could only pray that…
What a lame sentiment. As if God would listen.
No, Patrick couldn’t rely on God to help, no matter how much his mother or his brother, Brody, tried to convince him otherwise.
So the best he could do was monitor computer-wizard Anne’s progress.
A knock interrupted his thoughts. He opened the office door to a young Asian man, slim in build with dark, penetrating eyes that made Patrick think of onyx stones.
“Professor McClain?”
“Yes. Can I help you?”
The young man stuck out his hand. “My name is Cam. I’m transferring from MIT. I’ll be taking your class, Macro Economics of the Irish, this summer.” For a man with a slight frame, he had a strong grip.
“Wonderful.” Why was he here now? Students didn’t normally come knocking. Obviously this was an overeager overachiever. Not many of them around anymore. Too many students seemed jaded and uninterested in more than how to make a quick buck. “Do you have the list of required textbooks?”
“Yep. I’m all set. Just putting a face to the name on the syllabus,” Cam stated with a pleasant smile. “I—”
“Oh, bummer!” Anne’s voice interrupted.
Patrick glanced at Anne. She was shaking her head, her gaze fixated on the new computer screen. “Problem?” he asked.
She nodded but didn’t look toward the door.
Wanting to end the interruption, he turned back to Cam and asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?”
Cam shook his head, his gaze riveted on Anne. “No, thank you.”
“Okay, then.” Patrick stepped into the man’s line of vision.
Those obsidian eyes shifted to meet his gaze. “I’ll see you in class, Professor.”
As Patrick shut the door behind his new student, a chill skated across his flesh. There was something odd about Cam, something in the way the black of his eyes seemed depthless. Overeager, overachiever and off balance? He’d have to watch the guy. Patrick didn’t want a Virginia Tech tragedy happening at Boston College.
Shaking off the strange notion as nothing more than his worry over his work, he turned his attention to Anne. Her bright red, spiked hair didn’t look nearly as stiff tonight, as if she’d run her fingers through the points, loosening their rigidness.
Her high forehead creased with concentration and her lips moved without audible sound. The jacket of her ill-fitting brown suit hung off her shoulders, making her look slightly stooped.
“Why the bummer?” he asked as he came to stand at her side.
She sighed as she sat back. Her right hand reached up to massage her neck. “I zipped your files together and changed them to RTF. I just ran a program to import them to the new system and the computer didn’t like it.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Patrick tried to keep a quiver of panic from seeping into his tone. If he lost his work now, he’d have a hard time retrieving it.
“It’s not,” she replied.
Heart beating in his throat, he asked, “Have I lost anything?”
“No.”
Breathing more normally now, he relaxed slightly. “What exactly is wrong and how do we fix it?”
She turned her purple gaze on him. “Your old computer software program is not talking nicely to the new software program. During the transfer, the formatting was lost. I can go in manually to each file and correct the formatting. It will just take some time.”
“How much time?”
“A day, two at the most.” She clicked open a file. “See.”
The text on the screen was from one of his fall lectures, that much he could tell, but the words were all jumbled with paragraph breaks and tab spaces and what looked like hieroglyphics. He pointed to the screen. “What are all those?”
“Computer language. The new system has converted some of the letters and symbols. It’s easy enough to read through and correct by deleting and replacing each symbol. But I can’t do a global search and replace.”
“This is bad,” Patrick stated and plucked his glasses off his face to rub with a cloth he withdrew from his pocket.
Anne stood and placed a hand on his arm. “It’s not dire, just time consuming.”
The spot where her hand rested on his arm fired his senses beneath his sports coat. He cleared his throat. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow then?”
“Yes. And I think I should start first thing in the morning, if you don’t mind?”
Staring at the smooth, elegant fingers on his arm, he said, “The morning will be fine. I have a department retreat off campus until late afternoon.”
She removed her hand and began shutting down the computers. Patrick replaced his glasses and watched her movements. Efficient, graceful. Competent. Not at all like he’d first thought.
When the office was locked up for the night, Patrick handed his office key to Anne. “Can I walk you to your car?”
She put the key in her purse. “Actually I’m headed to the cafeteria. But thank you, Professor.”
“I’m not really a professor.” Now why had he blurted that out?
Her eyebrows rose. “You’re not?”
“I’m only an associate professor.” Heat rode up his neck.
She gave a small laugh. “But you’re still a professor.”
“True, just not a full professor.”
“Okay. And you’re telling me this…why?”
“You can call me Patrick.”
“Oh. Well, then. Good night, Patrick,” she said, giving him an odd look before hurrying away.
Patrick could just imagine his father shaking his head and saying, Smooth, boy-o.
A sadness that always burned just below the surface bubbled, reminding Patrick of all he’d lost. Reminding him of all he could lose if he ever let himself care too deeply ever again.
Anne paid the cafeteria cashier for her meal of egg salad sandwich, side garden salad and a bottle of water. One of the perks of temping at the college was the food discount in the cafeteria, though under the harsh fluorescent lights the egg salad had a greenish tinge that wasn’t terribly appealing. But she’d had one a few days earlier and had enjoyed it, so she wasn’t going to let a little green rob her of her dinner.
Halfway through her meal, she had the strange sense of being watched. Her gaze swung over the few other late evening diners and landed on the student who’d come to Professor McClain’s door. Cam, he’d said his name was, stood near the vending machine, his lean, wiry frame still and his black eyes boring holes right through her.
She frowned, hoping to convey her displeasure at being stared at.
He turned abruptly and put his money in the machine. Once he had a can of soda in hand, he moved out the door and into the dusky night.
A shiver of recognition slithered along Anne’s arms, prickling her skin. She was sure he’d been the man standing in the shadows yesterday.
Was his claim of putting the professor’s face to his name true? Was Cam really a transfer student or someone more sinister? Had she been found? Would she have to run again? Where would she go? How far would she have to flee to be safe?
“Stop being paranoid,” she muttered to herself.
But just in case, she’d like to be safe inside the four walls of her apartment.
Gathering her belongings, she quickly left the cafeteria. The balmy June air bathed her, sending the last of the air-conditioned chill of the cafeteria away with a shiver.
Glancing around to be sure no one followed, she hurried to her four-door sedan parked beneath one of the tall parking lot lamps.
As she drove, once again taking a different route to her street, she pulled out her cell phone and pushed the speed-dial number for the one person who wouldn’t think she was totally off her rocker for being paranoid.
“It’s me,” Anne said to the woman who’d picked up the line.
“What’s the matter?” The sharp edge of concern echoed in Lieutenant Taylor’s voice.
“Nothing, I think. I don’t know. I’m just getting antsy.”
“You wouldn’t call just because you were antsy.”
“You said to call if anything seemed out of sync. This student…I don’t know. He gives me the creeps. There’s something vaguely familiar about him.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Cam. That’s all I got. He said he’s a transfer student from MIT. He’s taking one of Professor McClain’s classes this summer.”
“I’ll check into it.” There was a moment of silence. “How’s it going with the professor? Is he as stodgy as his profile says?”
Anne hesitated. Stodgy? After spending so many hours with him, that wasn’t a word she’d use to describe him. Cute for a geek. Adorably nerdy. Definitely charming in an odd way. Maybe too charming. Too easy to get caught up in. You can call me Patrick. “He’s an academic. Just the titles of his published articles make me yawn.”
An indelicate snort met her statement. “Don’t get attached. You’ll be leaving there soon.”
Anne sighed. “I know. Thanks for the reminder.” As if she could forget. “How soon?”
“Hard to say. The D.A. has you scheduled to testify right before closing arguments so you won’t have to come back to New Jersey until them.”
“How’s the trial going so far?”
“Slow. I’ll be in touch. And, hey…”
“Yes?”
“Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll get through this, you know You’re strong.”
The reassurance soothed some of Anne’s tension. If only she felt strong. “Thanks.”
“Call if anything else strange happens. You can always reach me at this number.”
“Will do.”
Anne clicked off and tried for some deep, calming breaths as she pulled her car into her parking space right in front of her building door.
Inside the safety of her studio apartment, Anne was greeted by a large white Persian cat with only one eye and a pink collar sporting a dangling, sparkly tiara charm.
Relaxing her voice, Anne said, “Hello, sugar.” She picked the cat up and snuggled her close. For a moment Princess allowed the contact before squirming to get away. Anne set the cat back on the floor with a sigh. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if the cat loved her or not.
A few days after moving to Boston she’d gone to the humane society looking for a guard dog and ended up with a cat. The minute she’d seen the feline, she fell in love with the ball of fluff named Princess and had brought her home.
Princess marched straight to her bowl, tail stuck in the air, and meowed.
“Ah, we’re hungry.” Anne opened a can of food and left Princess to her dinner.
Making her way over to the Murphy bed, Anne kicked off her shoes and stretched her toes. She hated heels, but the role she was playing required sensible pumps and the itchy dress suit. Thankfully bare legs were an acceptable style. The thought of nylons made her shudder.
She changed into soft cotton pajamas and crawled under the down comforter. Her mind wouldn’t quiet down however. Her thoughts kept churning through the morass of danger that lurked. Was Cam a student or a henchman for Raoul Domingo? Would one of them slit her throat as she slept? As she came out of the school building? Went to the grocery store? Would she ever feel safe?
And what of the professor? And how much she enjoyed being around him?
Thinking about Patrick was more productive than angsting about the threat she couldn’t control.
There was something very steady and reassuring about him that drew her in and made her wish he could see her as she really was.
But he might not be so nice to her then.
The social-status-conscious “associate” professor wouldn’t want to socialize with a woman who had barely passed high school and had grown up in a trailer in the backwoods.
She punched the pillow with a groan. The sooner she got his computer up and running, the sooner she could move on to another project and another professor before her time was up in Boston.
She couldn’t afford to get too chummy with anyone.
Or “attached.”
She was pretty sure she could keep from revealing her past, but she wasn’t sure that she could keep her lonely heart from wanting what she couldn’t have.
A friend. Love. A life without fear.
As one day turned in to two days of deleting, replacing and reformatting, Anne’s eyes stung with grit and fatigue stiffened the muscles in her neck and shoulders. She’d figured out how to convert the old computer software into a language the new software could easily and readily read, but just to be on the safe side she’d been reading through each file and would occasionally find a trouble spot that she had to manually correct.