She depressed the clutch and braked for a group of students, willing them to walk faster. A blue sports car moved toward her. Just as she turned toward the space, the driver of the blue car cut in front of her and zipped into it. If Alyssa hadn’t braked, they would have collided.
A man opened his door and stepped from his car. Alyssa lowered her window and leaned out.
“Hey,” she called to the other driver. “That was my space.”
The man closed his door and turned toward her, slinging a messenger bag over his neck.
“You can’t park here,” he said, sounding like he was entitled to the space. He brushed a strand of dark hair off his forehead. He wore dark glasses and had a short beard.
“Why not?” Alyssa said. “I was here first. And besides, I’m late.”
“So am I,” he said. “You can’t park there without a faculty permit.” He smiled, but it seemed sarcastic, more like a smirk.
He pulled off his sunglasses and flashed dark eyes. Alyssa caught her breath. He was a hunk of a man with sexy eyes. Maybe he thought his eyes would sway her.
“Oh.” Alyssa tried to match his sarcasm. “I suppose you think you should park here instead of me.” She could finesse any man in traffic. She wasn’t about to give up her spot.
“You’ll get towed.” The man pointed toward the pole at the front of the space.
Alyssa followed his gesture. A sign designated the space Faculty Parking ‒ Permit Required.
She jammed the shift into reverse and backed a few feet, then pulled forward. Alyssa caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror. He turned and looked at her as she drove away, then hurried toward the building.
Alyssa tried the next row. Success. Halfway down the row a car backed out and drove away. She was next in line for the empty space.
Alyssa blew back a strand of hair. Good grief. She’d forgotten to take the elastic band from her hair. She probably looked like a kid to the man in the blue car. Just another coed who would moon over his looks and throw herself at him to get help.
She yanked the band out and shook out her shoulder length hair. Now she looked more like a grownup.
Alyssa pulled into the parking space and slammed the gear shift into first. She set the brake and locked the SUV, then all but sprinted to the classroom building. If she encountered the man with the fancy sports car, she wouldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. If she ever got her hands on his neck, she would wring it. He had no business being so…right…and, dammit, good looking.
Inside the building a clock read six thirty-two. She was definitely late. She fumbled the zipper on her purse open and stowed her keys as she hurried down the hall. Finally, at the far end, she found Room 138.
The soft buzz of conversation drifted through the open door. Men and women of various ages occupied chairs in front of four long rows of computer screens. Every gaze focused on her as she slipped into the classroom, trying to be silent. A middle-aged, round-faced man with a fringe of gray hair stood at the front of the class holding a clipboard and a few file folders. His bald head shone under the fluorescent lights.
He looked up at her. “You are?”
“Mallory,” she said. “Alyssa Mallory. I … I’m sorry I’m late.” She looked around for a seat.
“Hmmm,” he said, marking a sheet on the clipboard. “Just don’t make a habit of it.” He smiled at her.
Alyssa realized he was teasing. His smile was merry and melted away the stress she felt about being late. She smiled back.
“But,” he said, his gaze including the entire class, “I was just saying, I do start on time after the first class. If you’re late ….” He shrugged and motioned Alyssa to a single empty chair in the front row of computers. “Sit there, please.” He handed her a file folder of papers.
Alyssa took the folder, made her way to the chair and sat. She glanced at the folder. “Dr. Edward Harbison” it said at the top of the first paper. At least she was in the right class.
The professor moved about the room as he spoke. Alyssa had to turn in her seat to follow him. “Now, folks, the first page is the syllabus. On the second page,” he droned, “you’ll see my grading system.”
Alyssa glanced around her. At the end of her row a tall, dark-haired man stood with his back to her. He leaned over a young woman who giggled at something he said. Then the man turned toward her. Alyssa recognized the beard and the strong profile. The guy from the parking lot. What luck. He was in her class. And she had made a scene over nothing. Embarrassment heated her cheeks. She ducked her head, not wanting anybody to see her discomfiture.
The man straightened and faced the instructor. Dr. Harbison was saying, “‒ and I’d like you to meet my assistant, Dr. Nick Trammel.”
Worse than in the class. Alyssa glanced around, hoping she hadn’t groaned out loud. Nobody was staring at her.
“Although he’s assisting with this class,” Dr. Harbison said, “he’s a visiting professor, and he’s in charge of the computer lab. Ask Nick for help whenever you need it.”
Not on your life, Alyssa thought.
Dr. Trammel grinned and waved. Alyssa imagined herself sitting in his fancy car, snuggling into his shoulder. God, where was that coming from?
Professor Harbison held up one pudgy hand. “Nick,” he said, “anything you’d like to add?”
Nick shook his head. “No, Ed, not really.” He turned to the class. “Lab hours are posted on the door. Just remember that Windows 10 is very friendly. You really can’t implode into another universe just by hitting the wrong button.” His gaze scanned the class, resting on no one ‒ until Alyssa. He paused an instant, eyebrows raised slightly, then turned to the next student in the row.
Older than she was, Alyssa thought. Lines around the eyes. Maybe thirty-five or so. Tightness at the mouth. His smile never touched his eyes. Probably insincere. Married? She couldn’t see his ring finger. Married or single, she thought, all the women in this class will sign up for his lab. Except her. She could figure out the computer by herself, thank you, with a little direction from the class. She didn’t need someone to tell her what she could read in the directions.
Dr. Harbison had finished his introductory remarks. “Now we’ll make sure all systems are up and running before we proceed. Just move the mouse, and the monitor will turn on.”
She moved the mouse a bit, but nothing happened. She moved it again. Nothing.
“Hello.” Alyssa startled at the voice next to her ear. Nick Trammel. “Sorry if I scared you,” he said. His voice was deep and more resonant than she had noticed in the parking lot.
“No, no. That’s all right,” she said. “I should have been paying attention.”
He reached across her and pressed the On/Off button on the monitor. “Sometimes they need a nudge.”
Her screen came to life and displayed the initial Windows screen.
He leaned closer to her and rested his right hand on the table. Diamonds set in yellow gold sparkled on his ring finger. It looked like a wedding band. She wondered why he would wear it on his right hand. Divorced? Alyssa stared at it. She caught a whiff of his aftershave: masculine and outdoorsy. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart thumped. Maybe she was getting the flu or something.
The screen morphed to a blue background and the U of M logo.
Dr. Trammel pointed to the sign-in. “Enter your student ID and the password found on the first sheet in the folder, and you’re in.” He straightened and smiled at her. It looked forced.
He moved on to the next student.
During the next hour, Alyssa tried to pay attention to the professor’s directions about how to set up a word processing program for children, but her mind wandered. Nick Trammel’s voice surrounded her. It was a low rumble from the corner of the room, then a patient drone from the back, then an encouraging murmur from the row behind her. It sliced into her consciousness with the swiftness and unexpectedness of a paper cut. She could not ignore it. The more she co
ncentrated on Dr. Harbison, the less she followed.
At a few minutes after eight, Dr. Harbison called for attention. “Okay, folks. Normally we go for two hours with a ten minute break in the middle. Tonight, because it’s the first class, I thought we’d do away with the break and leave early. It’s been my experience that you get more out of it if you go home, read your material and go through the tutorials. Pretend to be a little kid and write a story. Come back Thursday armed with some hands-on experience.”
Alyssa logged out of her student account, collected her papers and was preparing to leave, when she heard Nick Trammel’s voice again. “Ms. Mallory?”
Alyssa didn’t want to face him. She had embarrassed herself royally. But Ellen had taught her well. Manners decreed that one couldn’t ignore a friendly summons. Besides, maybe he wanted to apologize.
She turned. “Yes?” Her voice cracked, and her face felt warm.
He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I hope you followed everything. I mean … my job is to make sure … well … that is, I’m supposed to help … I hope it didn’t move too fast.”
Alyssa couldn’t imagine why he seemed so ill-at-ease, but his nervousness somehow made her feel calmer.
“It was fine,” she said.
“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “Well, if you need help, I’m in the lab, and I’m here to help and if you need anything ….”
She stared at him a moment, fascinated by the tiny lines around his eyes. Worry? Or just wrinkles? Why was she staring at him?
“Thank you,” she said finally. “Well, good night.” For a brief moment she thought he would say something more, but he didn’t speak. She slung her purse over her shoulder, clutched her folder to her chest and strode quickly from the room, knowing that Nick Trammel’s gaze followed her.
***
“Pretty lady,” Ed Harbison said.
“Hmm.” Nick stacked a few papers and squared them on the table.
Harbison’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t think so?”
“Didn’t notice.” He shoved the stack of papers into his messenger bag.
‘‘Ah.”
“And anyway, she wasn’t pleased to see me.”
Harbison nodded. “I noticed a little tension. Someone you know?”
Nick had worked with the professor for a semester, and although the good doctor didn’t pry, he did seem curious about Nick’s life. Nick confided in no one. He could not afford to let his guard down.
“No,” Nick said with a forced smile. “No, I never saw her before today.” He turned a wry smile toward the professor. “I had an encounter in the parking lot with her. She overreacted a bit, is all. I suspect that if she had her way, I’d never see her again. I cut her off for a parking space. She would have been towed. It was a faculty spot.”
Harbison laughed. “Where’s that magnetism that keeps all the women coming to class?”
“What are you talking about, Ed?”
“Never mind, never mind.” He clapped Nick on the shoulder. “Look, you know I never give advice, but you’ve worked with me a while now. You keep to yourself, you’re a computer whiz and a natural teacher. I know something is bothering you. So take this one piece of advice: go after what you want. It isn’t going to grab you, you know.” He patted Nick’s shoulder again and turned back to the classroom. “I’ll lock up. You beat it. Go ask her out for coffee or something. Talk to her about computers.”
“I don’t want to leave you with all this ‒”
“What?” Ed Harbison said. “I can turn off lights. Now go.”
Nick hesitated.
“Go,” Ed said.
Nick grabbed his bag. He tried to push away the thoughts coursing through his mind. Alyssa Mallory was attractive, but aloof, as if she were frightened of something ‒ perhaps of him. Fear he understood all too well. Fear had been his constant companion for years. Fear had sharpened his reflexes, honed his survival instinct to a fine edge.
He thought he’d left the fear behind, traded it in for ordinary caution. But lately he’d felt the old urge to look behind him, something he hadn’t done in over two years, since he’d left the hospital. He realized he had done just that when he got out of his car, and then again before he had entered the building.
Maybe it was just some overzealous student looking at him. But he couldn’t shake the sensation of a malevolent presence. Training had kept him alive before. His instincts had only failed him once.
He hoped it wasn’t a premonition. He didn’t believe in them. But some sixth sense made him think he was being watched. He’d had that feeling more and more in the last few days. And, despite his training, he could not catch anybody in the act. He’d decided that when he got home after class he would sit down with a beer and think through the last few days, see if he could remember seeing someone more than once.
At the building’s entrance he spotted the woman already halfway across the parking lot. Maybe he’d try again after the next class.
***
Alyssa passed the recently contested parking space and glared at Nick Trammel’s blue BMW. Hanging prominently from the rearview mirror of the car was a triangular faculty parking placard.
She hurried her steps. He must think she was a nut case. It seemed a much greater distance back to her vehicle than on the way in.
She climbed into the SUV, suddenly conscious of how shabby the old Suburban was compared to the shiny new BMW. Or for that matter, all the other cars parked around her. Alyssa frowned. BMW? How could a college professor afford a car like that? She decided he’d probably been a bachelor all his life and put his money into frivolous things like luxury cars, clothes and ‒
The image of his ring bloomed in her mind. It most definitely was a wedding band. Was he divorced? Or was it a family heirloom? Or ‒ Stop it, she told herself. What difference did it make? He was only a man with an expensive taste for cars. The summer session of twice weekly classes loomed before her, made less appealing by his presence.
He was nice looking. Handsome. Sexy. Admit it, girl. He was a hunk. Those brooding, dark eyes. The longish, dark brown hair just waiting for her to run her fingers through it.
Stop it, Alyssa told herself. She didn’t have time or room in her life for a romantic entanglement. She backed out of the space. Deep in thought about the irritation one man was causing her, she fumbled for the seat belt, then abandoned it as she shifted.
She braked when a few students sauntered in front of her. At the intersection between the rows of parked cars she gave up on the seat belt. She would buckle up when she stopped at the lot exit and didn’t have to shift.
Nick’s blue car moved parallel to her down the lane to her left. She glanced to the right where she would turn. In the intersecting roadway, a large, dark car approached ‒ too fast, but at some distance. She’d better slow down or she’d broadside the idiot.
The driver’s side window of the car lowered. The barrel of a pistol snaked out and balanced on the edge of the open window. A gun? Was she seeing things?
The image froze in Alyssa’s brain, sending shock waves through her mind of another time, another gun.
Don’t go there. Block it out ….
She stomped for the brake with both feet. Instead, she hit the accelerator. The SUV lurched forward. She yanked the wheel to avoid the car careening toward her. A sharp popping sound and then a crash. Momentum flung Alyssa forward, and her forehead struck something hard. Shooting stars of pain lanced into her head. She reflexively hugged the steering wheel and slumped into darkness.
Sounds echoed. Voices, muffled and distant. Woozy, she tried to focus on her surroundings. The Suburban canted to the right. She leaned against the door and almost fell out when someone opened it. Hands held her upright.
She tried to move, but someone held her back. “My van ‒”
“No, no, it’s okay.” A man’s calm voice. “Your tire’s flat. It’s all right.” He wore a blue shirt with a patch on the breast pocket. Police officer ‒ no, campus se
curity. He held a cloth to her face. “Just relax. You’re all right. An ambulance is on the way.”
Alyssa leaned back against the seat and drifted. There had been another vehicle. Something else. Don’t think about …. What? She couldn’t remember.
Someone touched her shoulder. “Wake up, ma’am.”
Aunt Ellen would never call her ma’am. She would call her Lyssa. But Ellen was gone.
“Ma’am?” The voice echoed from a long way away.
Alyssa shielded her eyes from the brightness of reality. A gentle hand held one of her wrists. A tiny beam of bright light shone into one eye, blinked out, shone again in the other. She tried to twist away.
“It’s all right,” the man said. “I’m a paramedic. I just want to look at you.” Deftly, he wiped her face with a cold cloth and pressed an ice pack just above her left eye. He guided her hand to keep it in place.
Blurred shapes solidified into faces. A young man wearing a blue shirt and blue latex gloves leaned over her. He pressed a cold stethoscope against the inside of her elbow and pumped a blood pressure cuff.
Alyssa winced from the cold. “Hurts.”
“You hit the steering wheel,” the man said. “The airbag didn’t deploy. You have a small cut above your eye. You need a couple of stitches. Can you tell me your name?”
Of course she could. “Alyssa Mallory.”
“Do you know what day this is, Alyssa?”
She was on her way to class – no she had just left class. “Monday?”
The man nodded. “And where do you live?”
“Four twenty-two Stockbridge.” Ellen’s address came automatically. Alyssa’s home from the age of four, before she grew up, became a teacher and got her own apartment. “My license says 2206 Elm Ridge Road, but I’m staying in my aunt’s house. Ellen Greene.”
Tears gathered in Allyssa’s eyes. From grief? Or crashing into someone’s car?
The man nodded. “You seem to be all right, then.”
Another voice: “Ms. Mallory, can you tell me what happened?”
She looked up. A city police officer. He was young with reddish hair, freckles and blue eyes. “I’m Officer Briley. I need your license and registration. What happened?”
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