Page 21 of Follows with Intent

“He wasn’t walking. He was following. And then he was running.”

“It’s a tiny campus, Jay. It probably looks like we’re following those guys.” He indicated the men ahead of him. “And maybe he was out for a run and taking a breather, then he decided to start running again.”

“At night?”

“I run at night.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Nico rucked his bag up. “Goodbye, Jadon.”

“There’s been a string of assaults on campus,” Jadon said. And then, as they walked, he told Nico about it, laying out the basics, sketching out his investigation. “I’m fairly certain the man I saw last night is the same suspect from the other assaults.”

“Okay, but—” Nico tried to pick from a dozen different responses. He settled on “Then we need more police on campus, right? Until he’s caught.”

“That’d be nice, sure. It’s not going to happen.” Jadon’s dark eyes moved restlessly, as though he were reading some invisible text of the world. “For one reason, the Metropolitan PD is, as usual, stretched thin. For another, nobody happens to believe that the same perpetrator is behind these assaults.”

“But they’re all happening on campus!”

“And, as you pointed out, there are a lot of ways of explaining this away. The most obvious one is that most sexual assaults on campus happen in fall semester—early in the semester, actually. Do you know why?”

Nico shook his head.

“Because there’s a new group of eighteen-year-olds who go to parties and drink too much and end up in bad situations. So, if you’re a lieutenant and you’re looking at Chouteau College and you have a choice between believing this is a normal pattern of assaults, with the usual suspects—the normal pieces of shit, in other words—or believing this is a series of carefully planned assaults by a single, calculating individual, which one do you think you’re going to choose to believe?”

“That’s awful.”

“That’s reality, unfortunately. Lieutenants are experts in reality; that’s pretty much their whole purpose.”

Their steps clipped the bricks for a few yards. Ahead of them rose Eldridge Hall, but instead of walking faster, Nico slowed his pace. “I don’t understand. It’s not like this guy could be targeting me specifically. I mean, you dropped me off. Nobody could have known I was going to be where I was.”

“Nico, that’s not how it works. He doesn’t have to know where you are. He has to know where you’re going. Harlow Hall. Eldridge Hall. Waverley Center. Sterling Library. And you’re right: it might not be you, not specifically.”

The cold made Nico’s ears feel, strangely, hot. “But?”

“But I’m not willing to take that chance.”

“What?”

A hint of color dusted Jadon’s cheekbones, and he gave a tiny shrug, but he didn’t look away.

“So, what?” Nico looked around. “You’re going to sleep in your car and watch my dorm and walk me to class?”

“If you promise me you won’t leave your dorm at night, I won’t have to sleep in my car.”

“Do you think this is funny?”

Nico wasn’t sure he’d seen Jadon angry before, but he saw it now: the way his whole body tightened, and the easy happiness in his face crystallized into something harder, sharper. Nico liked it. He was also fairly sure he was going to hell.

“No, I don’t think this is funny. Do you think this is funny?”

“I think—” Nico shouldered his bag higher. “—I don’t need a bodyguard. I can take care of myself.”

“Great. I’ve got no problem being redundant.”

“I don’t need some walking alpha-male stereotype trying to tell me what I should do and how I should live my life.”

“I think you can handle it for a few days.”

---