Page 38 of Tempting the Player
I’m starting to feel more like myself when I notice a guy wearing a black hat low, covering his eyes and a red hoodie pulled on top. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve seen him in the past hour, and with tens of thousands of students at Valley U that seems like an awfully big coincidence.
Goosebumps dot my arms, and my throat constricts. I walk slowly in the opposite direction, trying not to seem panicked even though my heart is racing. I glance over my shoulder as I round the corner and find him twenty feet or so back walking the same way.
I pull out my phone, but don’t text the girls just yet. He can’t really be following me, right? Campus is quieter than normal right now because classes are going on, but I’m not totally alone and that gives me some sense of safety. If I scream, surely someone would come to my rescue.
That thought has more panic taking hold of my body. The red words spray-painted across my bedroom wall flash in my mind.Go back to Cali, bitch.My steps quicken and I make a last-minute decision to go into one of the buildings. He follows me, a little less space between us now. As I continue walking on the first floor, I can hear him still behind me. Every heavy step sounds closer and closer until I feel like he’s so close he could touch me.
I take off running without looking back. I can no longer hear his steps over my own and it’s terrifying to think he might be gaining, but I don’t stop. I keep going down the hall, and then frantically search for somewhere to hide. I pass classes filled with people, but I can’t just burst into one of them. I try a utility closet and find it, thankfully, unlocked. It smells like dirt and cleaning solution, but I don’t care. I hold the door handle and stand there in the dark, listening to my quick, shallow breaths.
When his steps come around the corner, I stop breathing and squeeze my eyes shut. He walks past the tiny room and then back again. It goes quiet, but I don’t move. I have no idea how long I stand there in the dark, clutching the door handle and too afraid to move when there’s another noise outside. Classes are letting out, I realize with a sort of sickly calm washing over me.
I’m too scared to leave even knowing I could slip into the hallway and disappear into the crowd. Someone was following me. My eyes sting with the threat of tears and I pull out my phone. Everything is blurry as I punch in the number. I let my eyelids fall closed and one tear slides down my cheek.
“Jane?” His deep voice and the authoritative way he answers makes my throat close up.
“Jane?” Hendrick’s tone takes on a hard, but somehow comforting, edge. What sounds like a truck starting up in the background interrupts the silence, and then he says, “I’m on my way. Where are you?”
14
HENDRICK
The factthat she couldn’t remember exactly what building she’s in tells me everything I need to know about how scared she is right now. That’s to say nothing of her strained voice as she told me she was hiding in a closet because she thought someone was following her.
She dropped a pin, but that only gets me as far as the Emerson building.
Brogan and Archer follow behind me as I throw open the front doors. “You two check the floors above and below. Text me the second you find her.” I bark out the orders and then take off down the first-floor hall.
They were getting home when I got the call from Jane. I don’t know what I must have looked like for them to jump into the truck and come with me, but I’m glad they’re here. We can cover more ground, faster.
It’s late afternoon and the halls are quiet. I glance side to side as I walk, looking for closed doors. Most of them have windows I can glance in to see classes in session, but my pulse jumps when I spot a wooden door just past the bathrooms.
I rest my hand on the door handle. “Jane?”
Silence greets me, but I pull open the door anyway to double-check. The sight that greets me nearly takes me to my knees.
Jane sits on the floor in a ball, arms wrapped around her legs and head buried in her thighs.
She glances up at me, eyes wide with terror, and it freezes me. I’ve protected a lot of people, but I have never felt this insane pull with a client. Keep them safe, avoid danger. See it before it happens and redirect. If you have to act, you’ve already failed. And I feel like such a fucking failure.
She scrambles to her feet and launches herself at me before I have time to prepare. My body knows exactly what to do where she’s concerned. My arms circle her waist and one hand cups the back of her head as she buries her face in my chest. Her entire body shakes as she sobs. She’s dead weight in my arms, and I suddenly feel a little jelly-legged too.
I guide us down to the floor with her sitting on my lap and shut the door so that it’s only open a crack to give us some privacy. My chest burns as I feel her completely fall apart.
We sit there in mostly silence, only her ragged breathing and sobs and the sound of my heart cracking wide open, until Archer and Brogan jog by. I flag them down without moving Jane off me.
“Is she okay?” Archer asks, taking in the situation.
Fuck. I hadn’t even thought to ask if she was okay physically.
At his voice, she lifts her head slightly.
“Hey,” I say, voice hoarse. “You’re all right. I’m here. Are you hurt?”
When I don’t get an answer, I guide her chin up with my thumb to get a better look at her.
Streaks of black are smudged around her bright green eyes, still pooling with tears, and her face is red and splotchy.
“Did he hurt you?”
