Page 34 of Follows with Intent

But when he checked behind them again, he saw Heeley. The security guard was skulking in a narrow passageway between two buildings, but Nico was sure it was him. Although—Nico frowned through the gloom, trying to make out what he was wearing. Dark clothes. But they didn’t look like the uniform he’d been wearing the other day. But that could have any number of explanations. It might be the gloom, playing tricks on Nico’s eyes. It might be that Heeley had ended a shift, or was about to start one, and he was in his civvies. Did security guards call them civvies?

“Everything okay?” Jadon asked.

Nico whipped his head forward and managed some sort of noncommittal response. He could have told Jadon about Heeley. He could have mentioned, in passing, that it was strange. But what if it wasn’t strange? What if Heeley had a perfectly innocent explanation for following them?

Nico dragged his gaze forward again, his mind racing as he tried to keep his body language normal, his stride smooth. They reached the edge of the quad, and when he looked a third time, Heeley was still back there. Moseying along, yes. But there. And this time, Nico was sure he made eye contact.

He opened his mouth to tell Jadon, and before he could say anything, he thought of how, only a moment before, he’d been worried about Meza. And how there were a million reasons Heeley might be crossing campus right then. He might be going to the gym. He might be going to meet a friend—he was young, the right age to have friends on campus. Hell, he could be a student here, and he was going back to his apartment or dorm. Nico wrestled with a nervous giggle. He could be going to the library. Maybe he and Nico could be study buddies.

At the glass doors to the library, Jadon paused, studying Nico’s face in the panel of light that fell from inside. Then he said, “Are you sure everything’s okay? If you want to go with your friends—”

“They’re not my friends. Well, Maya is. And no.” Nico softened his voice. “Thank you, but I’ve got to get this paper done. Or, at least, I’ve got to print it off so, after they massacre me tomorrow, they can shred it and bury me in the strips of paper.”

Jadon nodded. “Like a giant litter box.”

For a moment, Nico forgot about Heeley. “What is wrong with you?”

Jadon opened the door, grinned, and made a courtly, after-you gesture as Nico stomped past.

This time, Nico waited while Jadon got a pass, and they went up to the fourth floor together. Instead of the large, open study space, Nico made his way through another fire door and into the stacks. This was the heart of the library, where the collection was housed. The floor was sealed concrete. The walls were concrete too. The shelving units were a dull, serviceable gray that probably would have brought fond memories to the heart of a rear admiral. Fluorescents buzzed steadily overhead, their light sterile and strangely depthless, and even with the HVAC system circulating air, it smelled of moldering cloth bindings and old paper and something else, a smell Nico associated with freshmen dorms and finals week and unbrushed teeth.

Carrels were spaced throughout the stacks, and Nico found one close to the section of books he needed. He slung his backpack from his shoulder, pulled out the chair, and made quick, efficient work of laying out pencils, notes, his laptop. When he looked up, Jadon was grinning.

“Message received,” Jadon said.

“What message?”

The grin got bigger. “I’ll let you work. Let me know if you need to go anywhere.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“You know, I like it when guys call me daddy,” Jadon said. And he did some sort of stretch, arms over his head, that pulled his shirt tight against his chest and made Nico think wet, thirsty thoughts. And then, still grinning, he sauntered off.

“Asshole,” Nico said by the time he recovered the power of speech.

But Jadon was gone, and it was too little, too late.

Nico set to work. None of the farting around that—if he were being honest—typically took up ninety percent of work sessions. He didn’t check his mail. He didn’t look at campus news. No scrolling the New York Times. No checking JSTOR “just one more time” to see if someone had miraculously published a new article since yesterday. No phone.

It was hard. And tedious. And it was probably why so many people, grad students among them, had such a hard time finishing what they set out to do. But deadlines had always been a motivating factor for Nico—lose five pounds by Friday or don’t come back; complete your thesis by December or be asked to leave the program; finish this paper or be a laughingstock on the final day of the seminar, kiss this golden opportunity goodbye. And then what? Get a real job? Spend the rest of his life mastering the ever-evolving intricacies of the Emery Hazard filing system (patent pending)?

He was still working when, unmistakably, he smelled smoky, savory meat. He lifted his head and glanced around. The stacks were silent. Then ductwork boomed as the HVAC came on again, and Nico startled. People brought food into the stacks, of course. They weren’t supposed to, but until the university started employing a dedicated task force of police librarians (which, Nico thought with the typical mixture of fondness and low-grade annoyance that accompanied every thought of the man, was probably the job Emery Hazard had been born for), students were going to do what they wanted. So, someone had brought their meal into the stacks so they could keep working. Nico’s stomach grumbled. It wasn’t a bad idea.

Then someone whispered, “Boo.”

Nico jumped in his seat. He twisted in the chair: the shelving units, the long empty aisle, fluorescents streaking the concrete—

“Dumbass!”

Jadon had shifted the books on the shelving unit and made an opening to stick his head through. He looked both amused and incredibly self-satisfied as he put a finger to his lips and—a tad dramatically for such the butch cop type—whispered, “We’re in a library.”

“I know we’re in a library!” It wasn’t exactly a yell—more like a whisper if somebody had it by the balls. “Do you know how I know? Because I’m working. Here. Silently. Studiously. In the library. Not—not screwing around scaring people half to death! You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Jadon’s smile was big. And silly. And bizarrely confident. And in the light of all those late-night texts, Nico suddenly understood what he was seeing: Jadon Reck, the man, the one who wasn’t dragging around whatever had made him decide the only fit punishment was working himself to death. It surprised Nico, how young Jadon looked, and it surprised him again that Jadon was young—that he was, in fact, almost a year younger than Nico.

Before Nico could process the thoughts, plastic rustled, and Jadon pulled his head back enough to display a bag through the opening.

“You’re not allowed to have food in here,” Nico said, but his stomach rumbled so loudly that he was pretty sure Jadon heard. “And you have to put those books back.”

---