Page 16 of The Baller

“A campus creeper. All schools have one. It’s a guy who goes around creeping on girls.”

“Dude, you have to stop watching chick flicks.”

“It’s not chick flicks! It’s true. My sister told me.”

Ace rolled his eyes; I scrubbed a hand down my face. Parker stayed silent, until he didn’t.

“I never thought I’d say it, but Tan’s right. That guy iswalking alone, in the same direction as those girls. He stood in the corner of the bar, not doing anything, and you said you saw him in Brown’s.”

“Two and two equals a creeper.”

Didn’t know what the fuck that math was, but in the distance, the girls turned left to cut through to Van Am Quad. Twenty seconds later the guy followed, and they all disappeared out of sight.

I clapped my hands together and jumped on the spot. I was ready to kick some ass. “Boys, what are we doing?”

The four of us followed because it felt like the best thing to do; the creeper came back into view, walking along the path running around the perimeter of the grass. And there were the girls, thirty seconds in front, briefly disappearing as they passed under a broken streetlight.

The whole square was dark.

“You know, someone really needs to tell whoever’s in charge that it’s not safe here.”

Aside from another couple of people on the far side of Van Am, the place was deserted. Ace was right. But now we’d stopped running, I was kind of having second thoughts about following a guy who may or may not be a creeper.

“Yeah, I’ll make it my first job in the morning. For now, can we focus? What are we doing? Is this crazy?”

“We’re stopping him before he reaches the girls.”

Yeah, this is crazy. “How?”

“Ask him what he’s doing. Go on,” Tanner nodded way too eagerly and shoved me forward. “We got your back. We’ll be right behind you.”

All three of them waited for me to make my move in this half-baked plan. No, half-baked was a compliment. This planwas still soaking wet. From the way they were all bouncing on the balls of their feet, their excitement likely had more to do with the fact we’d been knocked out of the playoffs, and we were all still pissed about it.

We were creating a distraction by thwarting a potential creeper.

Yeah, this had disaster written all over it. Except,except, I still hadn’t gotten her name or number.

“Go,” urged Tanner again, as the creeper passed under the broken street lamp.

“Yeah, okay.” I jogged a little ways ahead; my back-up crew followed.

I was bigger than this guy. If it came down to it – which I doubted it would – I could take him.Wecould take him. There were four of us, and we were all professional athletes.

In hindsight, I wish we’d come up with a plan better than ‘stop him’, because as I got nearer, I realized I wasn’t sure exactlyhowI would stop him.

“Hey!”

The creeper didn’t flinch, though it got the attention of a few people I hadn’t noticed earlier. I tried again. Nothing.

I was ten yards out when I gave it a second go. Quieter this time, because I wasn’t trying to make a scene.

“Hey! Buddy, I’m talking to you.”

I reached out to grab his shoulder… I think. Except… somehow… instead of grabbing his shoulder… I found myself on my back with a gun pointed in my face.

Which is when things went from crazy to really hitting the fan.

I didn’t even have time to shit myself before Parker landed next to me on the grass verge with a loud grunt.

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