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