The Professor (20 page)

Saturday night

Chez Pierre’s fronted on Cumberland, at the end of the commercial strip. One of the few chic restaurants in town, it did a brisk weekend business. Anniversaries, engagements and breakups were celebrated there regularly. It was the prelude to many a sexual encounter, the participants lubricated with good food and wine.

The Professor turned off Cumberland onto Twelfth and parked in the deep shadow beyond the restaurant. The cops rarely patrolled these side streets. They cruised Cumberland and returned on Cherokee, looking for easy prey—someone who’d had an extra drink after dinner, or too many beers at one of the bars. For the cops, it was shooting fish in a barrel. Unless Dispatch called them away, they never varied their routine.

He opened the car window a few inches. Night noises entered on the cool, evening breeze. Car sounds from Cumberland were loudest, but he gradually separated the lesser noises: stray snatches of music as a bar door opened and closed, the chink and rattle of glasses and pans through an open kitchen window.

He pondered that for a moment. Meg mustn’t be allowed to scream. No one would notice in the noisy bars. The residences were too far away. But someone in the restaurant kitchen might hear her.

Slumping in the seat, he lowered his head below the headrest. If someone drove past, they wouldn’t notice him waiting in the car. From this position, he could see the rear of Chez Pierre’s and the parking lot beyond it. The last few patrons straggled out the front entrance and meandered down the sidewalk to the parking lot. A group—two couples—lingered between their cars, chatting.
Go home
, he silently urged.
Leave.

He’d fantasized and rehearsed each step of Meg’s capture—and the events that would follow. Paula had entertained him, but instead of releasing the pressure, his desire kept building. His hand moved to his lap. He fingered his erection through his trousers. “Soon,” he whispered.

Anticipation dripped adrenaline into his bloodstream. His senses moved into a higher awareness. He smelled the residual sweetness of onions caramelizing on the grill, heard the hum of the mercury lamp by the restaurant’s rear entrance.

The couples turned as one when the restaurant rear door creaked open and slammed. The servers were leaving. First one, then two more emerged. One of the diners laughed, drawing the Professor’s attention. The couples separated and entered their cars. They exited onto Crabtree, leaving in a quiet purr of expensive, well-tuned motors.

He turned back to the restaurant. Meg was on the porch. He recognized the way she moved before he saw her features. Her head turned, as if she were talking to someone behind her.

He tensed. This was the moment.

Everything hung in the balance.

She had to walk back to her apartment. His plan depended on it.

The need gnawed at him like an alcoholic craving a drink. It clawed at the edges of his mind, the compulsion ferocious.

The first tendrils of fantasy intruded, plucked at him. He pushed them away. Time for them later, when he had her under his control. He needed to concentrate.

Her head shook no. For a second, the motion distracted him. He wanted her hair loose. His mind’s eye added the shake and tumble of auburn curls. He wanted to plunge his hands into it. Knot his fingers in its lush depths. Tighten and pull, arching her neck, baring her milky throat to him. Distort her face with a gathering scream.

He caught himself and jerked away from the vision.
Later
.

Tonight was the night. Meg was walking rather than getting a ride with another server.

He opened the car door, fluid as an athlete prepared for the big game. The interior dome light was switched off; the doors well-oiled. Silently, he eased the door closed and stood still, listening. There was a murmur of voices. Meg was still on the porch, talking to someone in the kitchen.

Timing. Concentrate on the timing.

Meg would cross Twelfth Street to get to Bellwood, the safe route through the neighborhood to campus. His meeting her had to look accidental, as if he happened to be leaving one of the bars. All he had to do was walk farther up Twelfth and wait in the shadows. When she started across the street, he could call to her. Once he approached her, once she recognized him, he could talk her into his car. But he needed to intercept her here, on Twelfth.

He’d taken ten steps away from the car when a light flashed behind him. A faint click cracked like a gunshot in the quiet. The Professor jumped and whirled. He bit his lip to keep from shrieking.

Soft footfalls sounded against the sidewalk. He froze, probing the night. Something moved just beyond the circle of light cast by the parking lot security lamp. Who? A mugger? How ironic would it be if a petty criminal foiled him?

Footsteps clicked closer. On the opposite sidewalk, a man turned the corner from Crabtree and ambled up Twelfth toward him. There was no urgency or secrecy in the stranger’s movements, but the Professor felt an alertness. The man’s head was aimed directly at his position. The Professor’s heart rate accelerated. Could the intruder see him? Tension dug claws into his stomach. Stay still? Keep walking? Which way?

Do something.

The stranger continued up the sidewalk, but now his attention had turned to the restaurant.

How had he missed him? The man had to have been sitting in a car when he arrived. Nothing had moved on the street except the departing patrons.

The Professor’s hands shook. The intruder had seen him arrive. Seen him exit his car. He pushed at the panic, driving it back. He’d gone over this a hundred times, planning, anticipating. Here at the critical moment, he’d forgotten the most basic point. He hadn’t checked for witnesses.

“Control,” he whispered. He eased toward his car. Watching. Ready to run.

The man turned into the parking lot behind Chez Pierre’s. The Professor waited, making sure he was headed for the restaurant’s rear entrance, rather than doubling back to the road. Silently pivoting, the Professor strained to see in the dark. Was the man alone? Nothing else moved, but he no longer trusted his instincts.

The Professor reached his car and slid into the driver’s seat. The man was halfway across the parking lot. He fumbled with the ignition key. “Control,” he chanted.

He had to stay in control.

How could he have forgotten something so critical?

The excitement of the hunt had gotten to him. The details had gotten away. This was how other people were caught. They were careless. They made mistakes. He’d never thought it would happen to him. He was too smart. He planned every detail. Now he saw how it could sneak up and bite him.

The intruder approached the building and the Professor switched his attention to the person coming down the stairs to meet him.

His heart stopped. Breathing ceased.

It was Meg.

The man turned when he reached her. The porch light flashed across his profile and the Professor fought the paralyzing stillness. There was something familiar about the man’s face. Something distinctive.

The man’s hand moved and touched Meg’s cheek. Possessive. He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked up at him, touched his forearm. Little signs of awareness. His head tilted back. Laughter. His hand slid confidently to the small of her back.

This is wrong.
It couldn’t be. Meg shunned men, didn’t allow them these small intimacies. Only he should be allowed to touch her, to explore her body.

They were walking now. She spoke. The man bent his head closer. His hand circled her waist, tucking her against him.

Bile rose in the Professor’s throat. Meg was his,
his
! This man had no right to touch her.

The light from the porch was behind them, but they were moving into the circle of illumination in the parking lot.

A feral screech threatened to burst from his mouth.

The tableaux etched into his mind. Agent Michael O’Shaughnessy. With
his
woman.

Touching his woman.

Leading her to a car.

Leading Meg to his bed.

It wasn’t possible.

A dull roaring sounded in the Professor’s ears. He opened his mouth, gulped air, and time restarted. His eyes clicked over to Meg and rage tore through him. In the time it had taken the policeman to caress her back, everything had changed. She glowed. Light from the overhead lantern gathered on her skin and cast a luminescent sphere about her.

Hatred threatened to swamp his reason. He clenched the steering wheel to keep from throwing open the door and charging the pair.

Meg coiled her arm around O’Shaughnessy’s waist and dropped her head on his shoulder.

She was no different from the rest.

“Whore.”
The word dripped rage through his clenched teeth. She was a lying bitch, like every other woman.

The Professor watched the pair move, unaware of his presence, his fury. That would change. They would never overlook him, never forget him again. Meg slid into O’Shaughnessy’s car.
Slut. Going home to fuck him.

Well, he would have her too, one way or another.

And she would be both trophy and tool.

With one woman—one delicious kill—he would destroy not just Meg, but also the bastard who symbolized every man the Professor had ever despised.

He would ruin Michael O’Shaughnessy.

Early Sunday morning

The sound threaded through Mick’s dream. The bell for class became a fire alarm. He tossed in his sleep, hunting for either the fire or the Klaxon. The sound changed again.

The phone.

Heart pounding, he fought the dream’s paralysis. He thrashed in the darkness, fumbling for the receiver. “Yeah?”

His free hand groped for the bedside lamp.

“I found him!” yelled a voice.

Mick jerked the phone a foot from his ear. Music blasted from the earpiece. He maneuvered the speaker end closer. “Andersen? You need backup?”

“What? No.” The tone changed. “He’s not here now.”

You idiot
, was added implicitly.

“Can you go outside? I can’t hear you over the music.”

There was a muffled curse and various crowd sounds. “Hang on.”

Blessed silence; Mick squinted at the clock. Damn. 2:47. After taking Meg home and driving back to Greenville, it’d been nearly two when he fell into bed.

Andersen was back. “I’m at the Depot. He was here last night. A waitress recognized that gelled version you had Buzz draw. She said it looked like he expected someone to be here. He cruised the bar awhile, looked pissed off and left.”

“Did she catch his name?”

“He ordered at the bar and paid cash.”

“What about the bartender?”

“He’s not working tonight. Listen. The guy’s obviously hunting. And it sounds like he has a target. We’re running out of time.”

“What exactly do you want me to do at—” he glanced at the clock “—two forty-nine?”

“I thought you wanted to know.”

“Why don’t we talk about this when it’s daylight?” Mick asked through clenched teeth.

He hung up and flopped onto the pillow, cursing Andersen. The asshole was probably saying equally choice things about him.

He was wide awake now. His options for what to do next were equally unappealing. He could lie there and brood about the case or he could think about Meg and get horny and frustrated.

God
damn
Andersen for waking him up.

Meg woke slowly. She stretched, then burrowed into the pillows. A private smile crossed her face. If she’d wanted to, she could’ve woken up in Mick’s bed this morning.

She’d considered that possibility while she was working last night—debating the pros and cons behind a smiling facade. At some point during the evening, she’d decided there were definitely worse things than a boyfriend who wanted to protect her—even if she could stand up for herself. A frown creased her brow. The relationship with Mick really was too much, too fast.

Still…

She suspected her go-slow style frustrated Mick. Instead of being a jerk about it, he actually seemed to respect her for it. His kisses left no doubt about how he felt, but
he never pushed it. She hugged herself and reveled in the pleasure of feeling desire without having to act on it. The power to say no was nearly as intoxicating as Mick.

There were wonderful dimensions to him, beyond the physical attraction. She loved watching his face and hands when he told a story. The way his eyes lit up when he saw her. The ease of being with him—laughing over lunch, at the zoo. The concern in his touch. His acceptance of what she’d lived with for too many years.

Part of her couldn’t believe she’d told him anything about her childhood. Another part felt such relief at sharing the burden. She realized she wouldn’t have told him any of it if she didn’t instinctively trust him.

In spite of herself, she did trust him.

She rolled out of bed and stood in front of her mirror. What did he see when he looked at her?

She picked up her brush and slowly stroked the curls. What did she see in Mick? The exterior package or the man inside? The physical magic was wonderful, but it was the intelligence, the humor, the inner core she was falling in love with.

She sighed and stretched. Love or not, she had work to do. She pulled on a sweatshirt and powered on her computer. On autopilot, she opened her mailbox and breathed a sigh of relief when no strange teachers’ names appeared. In spite of what the police officer had said—and not said—she wondered if she ought to tell Mick about the e-mail too.

There were a couple of messages from [email protected]. Didn’t Randy Caruthers use that ID? She hadn’t heard from him since he graduated. She wondered if he was still designing computer games. She clicked the message open. It shouted in bold capital letters:

She recoiled, as if he stood in her bedroom, shouting. He’d been weird and perverse, but this…

She hesitated before opening the second message.

The compulsion to know overrode her concern.

She clicked on the message. Anger sparked from the words.

For the first time, she felt fear.

“O’Shaughnessy? Man, you wake up cranky.” Andersen’s cell phone sputtered, then cleared. “Chicks don’t like that.”

Mick ignored the commentary. “What’d you find out about the guy?”

“I tracked down the bartender. He says the guy’s a regular. Doesn’t say much, usually just watches women dance. Sometimes he gets lucky—leaves with a girl.”

“Any chance we can find one of those women?”

“They aren’t big on last names in this place. Anyway, the bartender said the guy asked about Allison last night.”

“Allison?”

“Yeah. Real hottie. Bartender said she comes in occasionally. Said she hasn’t been in for a while. Not since this Professor stuff started getting a lot of press.”

“What about the guy? Did you run his sheet?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. The guy always uses cash at the club.”

“We don’t have a name?”

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?” Mick asked testily. He was too tired to play twenty questions.

“After he turned into a regular, the bartender asked his name. I ran the name he gave. That guy’s clean.”

“
That
guy?”

“Yeah.” Andersen was clearly enjoying himself. “
That
guy is a professor at Furman. He’s on sabbatical—in Greece. He’s also six foot two, and about two hundred sixty pounds.”

Mick swore creatively. “So we don’t have any idea who this guy is?”

“We’re working on it. Every agency around here’s handing the sketches to the uniforms. Highway Patrol’s making it a priority. The press has it.”

Meaning Terri Blankenship, Mick thought uncharitably. “Good.”

Something had occurred to him while he wasn’t sleeping at 3:00 a.m. “Even if this guy is picking up his targets at bars, he may still be meeting them through the schools. Fax both versions of the sketch to the head of Human Resources at every college in the Upstate. Jordan has the names and numbers. Ask them to send it around to the department heads. Somebody has to know who this asshole is.”

“Good idea. Shouldn’t take more than a day or so to ID him. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

The Professor lowered the carefully wrapped vase into the packing box. Swirls of ebony climbing the crimson sides of the Codex-style ceramic peeked through the padding. He’d found the artifact on one of his earliest exploratory missions.

He reached for the basal flange bowl. All four legs still supported the bulbous vessel. A stylized bird’s head formed the knob on the lid. Graceful wings spread across the lid and flowed down the bowl’s sides. It was a prize, one of the few he’d seen intact. Smuggling it out of Mexico had presented a challenge. Tearing another length of bubble wrap from the roll, he swaddled the artifact in a double layer of protection.

The knife was next. The Professor carefully placed it on his desk next to his coffee mug. He lifted the mug and sipped, glancing around his office. What else should he secure besides his treasures? He’d copied all his research files onto thumb drives. Moving the hardbound text and reference books would be too obvious a sign of departure—both transporting them and the gaps left on his bookshelves. Floating a story about lending the artifacts to a colleague at New Mexico State was already pushing the credibility envelope.

Faraday. He snorted his disdain. The little prick might head the department at New Mexico, but he’d been stealing his ideas for years. Publishing and taking credit that should have been
his
. Farady grabbed all the funding—and all the attention. It was part of why he was stuck at this second-tier school instead of taking his rightful place at a leading university. And now he had to give up even that position. It wasn’t fair.

Staying wasn’t an option. After he saw this morning’s newspaper, Plan B— running at some indefinite time in the future—had become Plan A. He’d nearly thrown up on his breakfast table when he saw the picture on the front page.

He retrieved the newspaper and scowled at the article. The picture looked uncomfortably like him in his clubbing outfit. How had the police obtained it? How had
they ever connected him to the bars in the first place? He’d taken such pains to ensure nothing connected the women to either him or the pickup spots.

The article hadn’t provided nearly enough information for him to make these important decisions. Leaving his position here meant relinquishing years of research. If he went somewhere else, he’d have to choose a new specialty to ensure he didn’t inadvertently meet a former colleague.

It wasn’t fair that he had to abandon so much.

Maybe he was acting too precipitously. He dropped the newspaper and took another sip of coffee. If you cut through the histrionics, the article simply alluded to the presence of an unidentified man at several nightclubs. The police wanted him identified—and to talk to him.

Right, he snorted derisively. Talk to him. They wanted to manipulate him into revealing information they could use against him.

He picked up the obsidian blade and absently rotated it. They hadn’t discovered his identity. And they only had the club disguise, not his everyday persona. At least Paula wasn’t around to connect the dots for them. He’d sent the department head an e-mail from her account, fabricating a family emergency. No one else was likely to miss the nosy bitch.

Still, the risk was escalating. He should run, now, today. His eyes dropped to the object in his hand. Self-preservation led his priorities. Disappearing was the most prudent course of action.

Meg
. Her image floated on the lustrous black surface of the blade. Her smile turned to a taunting sneer.
“Loser,”
she whispered.
“You couldn’t touch either of us.”

She stretched, flaunting her deliciously ripe body.
“Think about me with Michael—him touching me, enjoying me—the way you never will. He gets the girls like me.”

The Professor felt his rage building.
The slut.

His hatred expanded, reaching outward. That damn agent. He’d outwitted him for weeks— O’Shaughnessy was nothing. But the smug bastard still got the girl—
his
girl, the one
he
wanted.

Pain—physical pain—flooded his awareness. A trickle of blood ran through his clenched fingers. He’d grasped the knife so tightly, it had sliced his palm. He opened his fingers and stared at the smear of crimson against the glittering black stone. Slowly, he relaxed his grip. “Perfect,” he whispered.

He would stay, just a few more days. He wouldn’t let Meg—or that fucking agent—win. It would be a fitting tribute and a final metaphor for the shrinks to ponder. He would use the obsidian implement when he claimed Meg’s life. Sacrifice her as the ancients did. Remove her still-beating heart. Maybe he’d send it to O’Shaughnessy.

Smiling, the Professor placed the knife aside and lifted his hand to his nose. The coppery sharpness smelled as heady as a woman’s musk. He touched his tongue to his palm. The bite of fresh blood sent a shudder through him that was purely sexual. Too long denied, the need roared through his veins. He needed one more—no, he
deserved
—one more conquest.

He wouldn’t leave without Meg.